All States should immediately register FIRs
Expressing serious concern over the plight of missing children, the Supreme Court on Thursday summoned the Chief Secretaries of six States for not responding to the notice issued on a public interest litigation petition.
A Bench of Chief Justice Altamas Kabir and Justices J. Chelameswar and Vikaramajit Sen expressed dissatisfaction with the lukewarm response from all State governments, in particular Gujarat, Tamil Nadu, Odisha, Himachal Pradesh, Goa and Arunachal Pradesh. The Chief Secretaries of these six States should appear in person on February 5, as they had failed to show up before the court and file a status report.
Accepting the arguments of the petitioner, Bachpan Bachao Andolan (BBA) that every day hundreds of children were going missing without a trace and law enforcement agencies were not serious about stopping this crime, and immediate steps should be taken for their rescue, the Bench directed all States to immediately register first information reports on the missing children.
The court also accepted the recommendations of the National Human Rights Commission to set up a special juvenile police unit in every station across the country with a dedicated Child Welfare Officer/Special Juvenile Police Officer, to swiftly act on complaints of children in need of care and protection as well as in conflict with law.
The BBA said that according to statistics including those available with the National Crime Research Bureau, between January 2008 and January 2010, a total of 1,17,480 children had gone missing in 392 districts and 41,546 of them were still untraced. The figure would be higher as eight States and three Union Territories had not furnished data on missing children.
The number of children missing in India was almost 90,000 every year, with more than 30,000 remaining untraced. West Bengal accounted for the largest number of cases, followed by Maharashtra, Karnataka and Madhya Pradesh.
As the term ‘missing children’ had not been defined in any statute, the cases were not being handled properly and the fate of the children hinged on the whims and fancies of authorities. The statute recognised only abduction and kidnapping, the BBA said.
The petition said the missing children were being exploited as labourers, commercial sexual workers and in an adoption racket. It sought a direction to the Centre, the States and UTs to come out with a national action plan; to treat the kidnapping or trafficking in children as a non-bailable and cognisable offence and to prepare a national database on missing children.
Senior counsel H.S. Phoolka and counsel Jagjit Chhabra appeared for the BBA.
Keywords: Bachpan Bachao Andolan, missing children, child trafficking, human trafficking, Child Welfare, child rights
Kindly believe that kidnapping or abducting a person is a crime while
child missing or student missing or woman missing or man missing is
not a crime under IPC or an offence under any other act. Normally
there is no allegation against any person in such person missing
incidents. Hence, unless suspicion, there is no provision in law to
register a case by police and send the FIR to the jurisdiction Court.
But apart from departmental instructions and as part of their duty and
service to the community, the Police normally entertain such reports
for effecting a search operation through TV, Press coverage, hand bill
etc. apart from lookout communication to other Police stations seeking
intelligence on the whereabouts of the missing person. Mostly parents
or guardians or friends alone will be taking efforts to trace the
missing persons. This situation is not new but exists for decades as a
well known fact to the Courts.
It is pathetic that state governments do not take complaints of missing children seriously so much so that it has now come to a pass that the Supreme Court has to act like a school teacher and rap the knuckles of these governments.For that matter,it is not merely the case of missing children alone but many important issues are neglected because of the governments' predilection with other problems considered more important to the legislators when in fact they may be mere bagatelles.Is it any wonder that the Supreme Court tends to usurp the powers of the legislature?
Bravo supreme Court ! It is high time that drastic steps are taken with stringent punishment for the culprits, coordinators in such crimes as well as those responsible bureaucrats who fail to take immediate and timely action protect the children from being abducted..(This should also applied in the case of missing women by a separate section of IPC)
It is shocking to find that at a time when even sporadic attacks on children attract protests, wide coverage in the print media and hours of debates by TV Channels, 30,000 out of 90,000 children missing every year in India remain untraced and the issue is being handled casually by those responsible for governance and media remains almost silent about it. The immediate possible response from government is that once UID stabilizes this problem also will be resolved!
As an immediate interim measure, each Police Station in the country should be made responsible to keep upto date data on missing children and children with unclear identity in their jurisdiction. Probably the UID and Census authorities could host a National Website to publish this data on a real time basis so that the search becomes easier.
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