• Vishal Talreja went missing from outside his home in Indore's Sudamanagar on a Friday evening in 1998 when he was three-and-a-half years old. He was playing with his elder sister, Harshal, when she went inside for a cup of tea. “When I came out after five minutes he was not there,” says Harshal, now 14. The family believes if they had more money, the police would have done much more.

• Amjad, 11, went missing five years ago after he left his house in Bhopal's Kazi Mohalla to offer namaz. His father, Kudrat Noor, had married for the second time at the age of 65 because he had no issue from the previous marriage. Now 81, Noor has seen a body exhumed and being labelled as his son's. He did not identify it nor did two DNA tests help. The octogenarian father says his son is alive but doesn't know where to look for him.

• Faizal, a 12-year-old mute boy, went missing on December 12 from his house near Akhadewali mosque near Bhopal Railway Station. “Ham kahan dhundne jayenge, tumhi dhund lo (where will we search, you look for him yourself),” the police told Nasir Khan, his 63-year-old grandfather. “There is no day that I don't look for him,” Khan said after returning from Sehore where he was told a beggar resembling Faizal was seen.

The police can't show more concern. There are no beggar gangs, no organised flesh trade, no flourishing kidnapping racket in Madhya Pradesh so when a child goes missing, the police wait for her to return home. After all, most of them run away because of trouble at home, poverty or love affairs. A missing child, they say, is last on the priority list, unless the parents are influential.

... contd.