: Not just children, a number of elderly persons have gone missing in the ongoing Krishna Pushkaralu, the once-in-12-year river festival that has been attracting lakhs of pilgrims from all over the State and other Sates. The pilgrims perform puja to the river, take a holy dip and make ‘pinda pradanam’ to their ancestors.
Police, civic officials and volunteers are surprised at the disturbing trend of 90 per cent of the missing cases reported so far are those of senior citizens and not children as has been anticipated by them when the river festival began on August 12. They now wonder if their effort to introduce wrist tag protection has worked. Children were given the tags on which their name, parent’s phone number and helpline number were written with indelible ink so that tracing becomes quick and easy. The government planned something similar for the senior citizens but dropped the idea.
Since the day one of the festival as many as 125 missing persons cases have been reported to the Command and Control Centre (CCC). On Wednesday, the count was 15.
And nearly 90 per cent of these cases are about missing of elderly persons aged above 50. On Wednesday alone, 11 elderly persons went missing since early hours and with help of the helpline they got reunited with their family members later, according to the Pushkaram helpdesk team.
On the whole, 103 persons out of 125 who went missing were traced on the same day or later. But 22 persons, including 15 senior citizens, are still missing.
“A majority of the cases are that of the elderly. Lack of mobile phones and carelessness by their wards is to blame. As and when we identify such persons, we are guiding them to the CCC. Also, elders are not being cared as much as children are taken care of,” lamented a policeman at the Padmavati Ghat.
“Obviously lack of mobiles is causing the problem. As their wards approach us we are making announcements after which our volunteers or police bring them to CCC where they are reunited,” a volunteer at the CCC dealing with missing cases said.
“Cases not traced the same day are being forwarded to police. We believe that the 22 persons who are yet to be traced by us also might have met their accompaniers as their families used mobile phones of strangers to reach us and we could not get back to them,” he added.
