With 650 cases under his belt, police constable Rajesh Pandey is Mumbai Police’s go-to man when it comes to cracking a missing persons case and has managed to reunite many children with their parents.
Mr. Pandey, currently posted at Malad police station, has a ‘zero missing persons’ record at every police station he has worked so far prompting Police Commissioner Datta Padsalgikar to create a Pandey module. Every Mumbai police station and officer will now have to the module while solving missing persons cases.
First breakthrough
For Mr. Pandey, it all started in 2011 while being posted at Santacruz police station. In 2013, he was investigating the case of a 12-year-old boy who had gone missing complaint. The victim’s mother had approached the Mumbai Police to track her child. Mr. Pandey was part of the team probing the case. Fifteen days into the case, Mr. Pandey and his team nabbed the kidnapper, the boy’s estranged father.
Mr. Pandey who started his career in 1993 recalled that if not for his father’s death, he was all set to quit the force. “It was the need to raise my four younger sisters that kept me going,” he said.
Over the past seven years, Mr. Pandey has managed to trace and bring back missing children from Maharashtra, Gujarat, Bihar, Delhi, Jharkhand, Uttar Pradesh, and Ranchi. Mr. Pandey skillfully uses location tracing and social networking sites to track down missing persons.
Mr. Pandey said, “Mobile phones are a great tool to track people’s locations. WhatsApp is also an important tool for sharing information pertaining to missing persons. Technology has definitely helped us in cracking some challenging cases.”
When Malad police recently found the body of a child, Mr. Pandey helped the police nab the killers. Senior police inspector Sudhir Mahadik said, “He has emerged as a missing children’s messiah for the Mumbai Police. He has helped track close to 650 missing children and reunite them with their parents.”
Mr. Pandey said that children run away from homes due to education-related stress and domestic violence. He said, “In many cases, it has been witnessed that the parents do not inform the police once their children were found. After leaving their home, the children end up living on streets and begin begging for food.”
Operation Muskaan
He said that most missing children did not even know their address to return home. Mr. Pandey said, “Due to sudden spike in missing cases of minors, the Mumbai Police has started Operation Muskaan. The initiative had received outstanding response from the department. The drive has helped reunite hundreds of missing children with their families.”
Mr. Padsalgikar said, “Mr. Pandey’s working style has helped us successfully trace missing children. We have decided to adopt the Pandey module to trace missing children. Every police station will start following this module soon.”
