‘Cops given electronic access to data on missing kids’

The Union Ministry of Women and Child Development told the Delhi High Court on Wednesday that it has given electronic access to its data on missing and found children to the city police.

The submission came during the hearing of a petition initiated by the court on its own regarding missing children, in which it was examining ways and means to address the issue of tracing and restoring them to their families.

Recognition software

A Bench of Justices S. Muralidhar and I.S. Mehta posted the case for hearing on May 31, when the Delhi Police is to inform the court about the progress in the process of tracing missing children through its face recognition software (FRS).

During the hearing, Central government standing counsel Anil Soni, appearing for the Ministry, informed the Bench that electronic access to data on missing and found children has been shared with the Delhi Police.

Ministry website

The Ministry has a website, trackthemissingchild.gov.in, which stores data on missing and rescued children from 36 States and Union Territories.

The court had earlier directed the Ministry to share the data with the Delhi Police for running the FRS. The court had also pulled up the Ministry for trying to procure the FRS when the Delhi Police have already procured it.

The court had said that it “fails to understand with the Delhi Police already having procured the FRS why unnecessarily money should be spent in again procuring another FRS for Ministry, particularly when the Delhi Police is more than ready to share the FRS with all agencies and departments including the Ministry”.

Security agencies

The court had reiterated that the task of tracking missing children essentially falls on security agencies and the Delhi Police have been investigating a large number of such complaints. It had said that data available with the Ministry will be of invaluable assistance to the Delhi Police in performing this task.

The Ministry had sought a month’s time to complete the process of giving the access to its data but the court had granted it only a week.