The Delhi police on Monday filed an affidavit in the Delhi high court informing it that they had been able to recover more than 1,000 children who were gone missing in the city and its adjoining areas since last three years, so far.
Filing an affidavit in the high court comprising Justices Vikramjit Sen and A.K. Pathak, deputy commissioner of police Mangesh Kashyap told the division bench that it has recovered more than 1,000 children in the age group of 1 to 18 years.
The affidavit stated that it is yet to trace more than 1,100 children gone missing in Delhi, Noida, Gurgaon and other NCT region. The affidavit, a copy of which is received by this newspaper, stated that the police has given due priority to the cases of children reported missing.
It has initiated several measures, including computerisation of records and updating the data of missing children, to streamline and fine-tune the process of inquiry into cases of missing children, the affidavit claimed. The police stated that more than 2,000 children had gone missing from the city between June 2008 and January 2009.
The police also told the court that there is no organised gang, engaged in kidnapping children, operating in the city. “No organised gang in kidnapping children for any unlawful activity has so far come to notice in Delhi,” the police said.
“Some children lost their way, some left due to financial problems, some left due to extreme study pressure and some left for job,” it said. The court will now hear the matter on July 20.
The court had last year taken up on its own the issue of missing children after taking note of media reports that 2,210 children had gone missing from the city between June 2008 and January 2009.
“It is an alarming situation that in the last six months, more than 2,000 children have gone missing,” the bench had then observed.