Gujarat Director General of Police (DGP) Ashish Bhatia. (File)

Gujarat Director General of Police (DGP) Ashish Bhatia on Friday said that a special drive has been launched to trace abducted or missing children in the state. As many as 2,617 minors remain missing from 2007 in Gujarat as per information released by the Gujarat Police on Friday.

According to a statement released from the office of the Gujarat DGP on Friday, a meeting of senior officials was held on August 5 in Gandhinagar regarding probe into the cases of missing or abducted children (from age group 0-18 years) in Gujarat with special focus on Ahmedabad, Surat, Bharuch, Mehsana, Dahod and Godhra from where a large number of missing reports and minor abduction cases have been reported.

As per information released by Gujarat Police, from 2007 to 2020, as many 46,400 minors have reported to be missing or abducted and out of them, 43,783 kids have been traced and rescued back.

“The percentage of missing minors being traced in Gujarat since 2007 is 94.36%. A number of missing or abduction cases have been reported from major cities of Gujarat and a 15-day-long special drive has been launched from August 6 to August 20 to trace the remaining missing cases. In this drive, teams of Anti Human Trafficking Unit (AHTU), Detection of Crime Branch (DCB), Prevention of Crime Branch (PCB), Central Crime Branch (CCB) and Special Operations Group (SOG) will work in tandem with police stations of each district and city in Gujarat. The officers have been asked to look into observation homes and child care homes as well to probe the missing cases. The evaluation of the entire drive will be done by DGP CID Crime and Railways once its over,” read a statement from the office of DGP Ashish Bhatia on Friday.