Operation Muskaan: 12,278 of 13K missing kids traced since 2014

MUMBAI: In 2014, Mumbai Police undertook a special drive – Operation Muskaan – to trace missing children who were found wandering in the city, and reunite them with their families. The missing children bureau traced 299 of the 346 kids reported missing in Mumbai.

Since its inception till July this year, when the police conducted the 10th round of the special drive, 12,278 of the 13,005 missing children have been traced and around 4,000 of them have been reunited with their families under Operation Muskaan.

According to officers, around 120 children – a maximum of whom are in the 10-18 age group – go missing every month.

Operation Muskaan – which is being coordinated by deputy commissioner of police (preventive) Indian Police Service (IPS) officer Balsing Rajput – was launched by the Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA).

According to Rajput, there are at least 67 reasons why children go missing. These include kidnapping and abduction, which are done for various reasons such as trafficking, sexual exploitation, forced marriage and child labour. Another major reason behind children above the age of 15 years going missing is elopement. The other reasons include abusive families and unemployment within the families, owing to which, children run away from their homes.

A dedicated team of a sub-inspector and four constables trace the missing children. After tracing and rescuing the missing child, the police counsel and convince them to reveal their address or mobile numbers of their parents, which is the most difficult task in cases wherein a child has left home and away and does not wish to return. “We counsel the child, but when we find out that they don’t want to go home, we hand them over to the Child Welfare Committee (CWC) to rehabilitate them,” said Rajput.

If the child is ready to return to their house, it becomes the duty of the police officers to escort them to their house and reunite them with their parents or guardians. “The manpower is less but we make sure that the child is accompanied by a police constable. If it’s a girl, a woman constable accompanies her to her house,” said Rajput.

“We have an SOP (standard operating procedure) specifying the number of police officers who need to accompany the child, depending on the distance of travel,” added Rajput.

Talking about financial difficulties, Rajput said that earlier the money spent was shelled out by the officers accompanying the child, but now the police are given a budget or are refunded on their returns after the state decided to give them ‘investigation fund’ since 2015.

“Even after rescuing them, many kids find their way back to the same streets and began begging or working. So we follow up on them,” said a police officer.