Panel to prepare status report on Delhi's missing children

To keep a tab on issues of missing children, the Delhi Commission for Protection of Child Rights (DCPCR) has planned to prepare a status report by the end of next month.

"We are preparing an annual status report over the missing children issues. The report will be prepared till the end of November this year," DCPCR chairman Arun Mathur told IANS.

For preparing this annual report, Mathur said, a missing children cell was set up which holds meetings with the investigating police officers and the parents of missing children.

"The aim is to keep tab on the investigations being done by Delhi Police," said Mathur.

The DCPCR has launched a scheme, 'Khoj', to get the information about the missing children, said Mathur.

"All 102 registered children's homes have been instructed to provide the details of the children living there so that any missing child can be traced easily," said Mathur.

On an average, 18 children go missing in the capital every day and of them four are never traced, a report by the Alliance for People's Rights found.

A total of 6,494 children, 53 percent of them girls, disappeared in Delhi from Jan 1 to Dec 31, 2013, the report said, citing Right to Information replies from Delhi Police.

The reply to RTI query also showed that the number of missing children has increased in the past year from 14 cases a day in 2012 to 18 now.

In some police districts the number has shot up quite a bit - 54.82 percent jump in cases reported from West district and a 47.24 per cent increase from North-West district.

Only North-East and New Delhi districts saw a decline in the number of missing children in 2013 compared to 2012. The report stated "more than 50 percent of them (rescued children) are from the socially deprived sections of society".

The convener of the alliance, Reena Banerjee said: "This is just the data we could get from the police through RTI, but there are many cases that never get registered. So the actual number of missing children may be higher."

According to a DCPCR report, a total of 6,268 children were reported missing in 2008. In 2009 the number stood at 5,946, and in 2010 "at least" 5,091 children were reported missing.

In 2011 and 2012, the missing children were 5,111 and 5,248, the DCPCR report says.