Forty-year-old Bhola Yadav hasn’t stopped smiling since his daughter Phool Kumari returned home after going missing for 15 days in February. He said she was tricked into going to Lucknow by an acquaintance and was later traced by the police.
Munni Khatoon (42) was all smiles after she was reunited with her daughter Kanchan, who had eloped six months ago and returned within 20 days.
The Delhi Police have recovered 77 of 82 children who went missing or were kidnapped from Rohini district’s Vijay Vihar in 2016. “Many children were kidnapped by people they knew, some lost their way and others eloped. A girl who had eloped in 2012 and is now 20 years old has returned with her two children,” said Deputy Commissioner of Police (Rohini) Rishi Pal.
Social stigma
The parents of all these children are daily-wage labourers, rickshaw pullers, local vendors and hawkers, said Station House Officer (SHO), Vijay Vihar police station, Abhinendra. According to the police, the families of the missing children were reluctant to answer questions by the officers due to the social stigma over being quizzed by them. To resolve the issue, personnel in civil uniforms were sent to meet them.
“From interviewing and monitoring family members to analysing electronic data and conducting searches in numerous places across India, all the measures were taken to track the children,” said Mr. Abhinendra.
The police said these people belong to the lower strata of society and don’t have the means and time to track their complaints, which became the driving factor for the force to work on these cases.