“Many of these untraced children end up either being trafficked or for prostitution which is a huge law enforcement and social problem. Unfortunately, there is no synergy between what the Government agencies and NGOs do to tackle the problem,’’ says Nair. His report draws disturbing linkages between missing children and trafficking and lists several case studies to illustrate this.

“Even if they (the parents) report to the police,” the report says, “the police station treats it as a case of a child going missing. By and large, the police view in such cases is that it is the child who has run away or managed to disappear and they tend to pass the blame on to the child...Since (the evidence) showed that a large number of children who are reported missing are trafficked and thereafter, are being subjected to different types of exploitation, there is an urgent need to combat the problem.”

That’s what the Supreme Court had done in the Poonam Lal case when her father and Pushpa Devi’s husband Hori Lal knocked on its doors in 1988 for help in tracing his 17-year-old daughter.

Since the police failed to trace Poonam and the Central Government did not come up with firm proposals, a set of guidelines were eventually framed by the judges themselves. These include: mandatory publishing of the picture of the missing child in newspapers, on television, in public places like railway stations and inter-state bus stops; making inquiries from a long list of people and announcing rewards for tracing the child.

... contd.