• For over three years now, the Agarwals in central Mumbai have been waiting for their son Raj. A Class IX student, he never returned from school on November 18, 2003. That same day, his mother Arti received a ransom call for Rs 5 crore. A police team camped at their home, monitored calls and Rs 5 lakh was agreed upon to trap the ‘kidnappers’. The ransom was paid but Raj never got back. Agarwal moved the Bombay High Court which issued notice to the police on March 3, 2004. The very next day, police arrested five persons who they claimed had abducted and killed Raj near Pune. Agarwal was told that some skeletal remains had been found. But DNA tests concluded that the remains were not Raj’s. Mumbai Joint Commissioner of Police (Crime) Meeran Borwankar conducted a separate inquiry and, in a two-page report, saying the accused had been arrested and that allegations of faulty investigations were untrue. Raj remains untraced, his father still fighting in court.

• Jabeer was abducted from a mosque in Darukhana in December 2004. Two women befriended his mother, distracted her and ran away with the child. The police closed the case after making two rounds of the mosque and taking the parents to the police remand home for kids. The sketch of a woman was circulated but Jabeer Sheikh remains a ‘missing minor’ entry in the Sewree police register.

Maximum city Mumbai is also number one when it comes to missing children. In 2006 alone, Mumbai’s missing minor registers recorded 948 children as untraced. According to the Missing Persons Bureau of the Mumbai Police, over 2,307 children have remained untraced in the last three years. Since 2002, more than 650 children, on an average, remain untraced each year.

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