Operation Muskaan: Telangana police traces missing girl

Hyderabad: Four years after a girl from Khammam went missing in 2014, B. Ramadevi, now a teenager, was traced thanks to facial recognition technology that is being used by the Telangana State police to trace missing cases.

She was later handed over to her parents.

Speaking to this newspaper, Ramadevi's brother B. Veerana said, “My sister who was mentally challenged asked my father to give her a ride in his auto-rickshaw. He refused and went away. Disappointed by his refusal, she walked out of our village Seethampeta and took a train to Secunderabad."

He said Government Railway Police personnel who found her in the station handed her over to a children’s institution in Ghatkesar.

“We are delighted to see our sister in a stable condition,” Mr Veerana and thanked the police department for safely handing over his sister to them.

The Telangana police is using the facial recognition app to trace missing children. Inspector General (women's safety) Swathi Lakra said, “We are doing it in two ways, we are tracing missing children with the data available with us and data taken from various places like Track the Child portal, women and child welfare department. If there is any missing child complaint we are comparing it with the data which we have. If it matches it, we are handing over the children to their parents.”

She added that since Operation Muskaan (rescuing missing child) had begun, they were sending teams to all child care institutions all across the state.

“We are taking the photographs of children from those institutions and matching them with photographs of missing children. In this case we found the child was at Ghatkesar and the missing complaint was filed in Garala, Khammam district. We handed over the child to the parents.”

Earlier too, using FRA, the Rachakonda Police successfully nabbed a criminal at Balapur, rehabilitated a missing boy at Meerpet and traced another missing person at Nacharam.