Missing children: 80 cases filed in 4 days

Balwant Garg

Tribune News Service

Faridkot, December 21

After being pulled up by the Supreme Court, the Punjab police have registered over 80 FIRs in missing children cases in the last four days. However, they are yet to upload details of these children on the website.

The police did bother to register first information reports (FIRs) into most of the missing children cases "as a majority of them belonged to economically lower strata of society", sources said. 

With no FIR on record, the police failed to take the first step into investigating as many as 80 cases in the last 23 months in the state. 

Besides, the police did not even upload photos of these missing children on zipnet.in, a Zonal Integrated Police Network website of the Ministry of Home Affairs. The website was introduced in 2004 so that the police across the country could coordinate to trace these children expeditiously.

"As there is a lack of inter-state cooperation due to non-uploading of information on missing children on zipnet.in, most of the missing children are never traced," said HS Phoolka, senior advocate for Bachpan Bachao Andolan. 

The NGO had filed a public interest litigation in the Supreme Court to intervene in such cases.

Many districts, including Bathinda, Amritsar and Sangrur, did not upload information and details of missing children in the last five ears on the website. 

Moga district is an extreme case, where the police last uploaded such information in 1999-2001.

The Faridkot police record revealed that in the last 23 months, 45 persons had gone missing under mysterious circumstances.

But, the information on the website revealed that it was in July 2010 that somebody last went missing in the district. 

As per the information uploaded on the website, between November 1999 and July 2010, 89 persons, including 22 women, went missing in Faridkot district.

G Nageswara Rao, Inspector General, Crime, Punjab project coordinator of the zipnet cell, expressed dismay over delayed uploading of information on the national portal. 

"I will ensure that there is regular updating of information regarding missing persons so that we can get help from other states' police," he said.