Missing children rescued by cops the lowest this year since 2015

Ghaziabad: Sheikh Zafar’s 10-year-old Sameer went missing while playing outside their house in Kavi Nagar in December last year. Despite being poor, Zafar had not left any stones unturned to trace out their son, but all efforts came to a naught after the imposition of Covid lockdown. Though the Ghaziabad police had filed an FIR four days after Zafar lodged a missing person’s complaint, no progress has been made in the case till date.
“From Ghaziabad to Gurgaon, Tundla to Aligarh, we had searched for our son everywhere for almost four months. We were in Gurgaon looking for the boy when the coronavirus lockdown was announced, following which we had to walk back home. Literally, we ran from pillar to post to trace our missing son. Till now, police have not been able to find our son,” Zafar said.
In fact, coronavirus has had an unexpected consequence — the number of missing children rescued by the Ghaziabad police this year is the lowest since 2015. The reason cited by cops is the deployment of personnel in pandemic control duty instead of working to rescue missing children. Till now, the number of children recovered by Ghaziabad police is 57% versus a record recovery of over 80% in the past five years.
According to police data, from January to July 31 this year, some 47 children, including 31 girls, went missing while playing or when they had stepped out. Police have recovered 27 such children so far. In 2019, police rescued 85 of the 99 children ‘missing’, and in 2015, the figure was 87 of the ‘missing’ 95. And of 570 children who had gone missing from January 2015 to July 2020, some 480 have been tracked down by police.
According to a senior police officer, every year around 25% children leave their homes due to mental stress and some of them run away with their friends, but they return after some time. “Some girls who run away with their partners also return home or are tracked down by cops. But the ones who can’t be found are those who go missing during natural disasters. Also 10-15% of children fall prey to trafficking,” he said.
When contacted, Ghaziabad SSP Kalanidhi Naithani admitted that normal policing was affected due to the pandemic. “Cops were on their toes almost round-the-clock during lockdown and in containment zones. A section of the force was also deployed to track down Covid-19 patients and their contacts,” he said.
“Now that the situation is getting back to normal, we hope to rescue all the missing children soon. I will set up special teams at police station levels to trace the missing children,” he assured.