• Ashish, 14, left home one February morning two years ago. The Class 8 student at the local Wood-Stone High School had just Rs 310 on him. He is not back yet. Carrying his son’s photograph, Aman Kumar, 44, has travelled to every corner of Himachal Pradesh, looking for the teenager.

But he hasn’t given up. “I must know where he is.” What he says he has given up on is any hope of help from the police. “The police haven’t called me even once after I filed a complaint two days after Bagga disappeared.”

• A 13-yr old girl went missing on January 8 last year from her village in Mandi. Her parents did not go to the police but looked for her in the area. They did this for 11 days. Just when the father, a farmer, was beginning to think that she may have eloped, he got a distress call from her in Manali. The police then rescued her from a hotel, where “she was subjected to sexual abuse”, says Chander Shekhar, SP of Mandi. The police later found that the girl was lured by her own aunt, who promised to marry her off to a Delhi boy, only to push her into prostitution.

Certain parts of Himachal Pradesh are perhaps as poor as any other in the country, but crime rate is low and there are never any reports of children being abandoned or sold by parents. Even so, 350-450 children are reported missing every year, according to data recently compiled by the police.

... contd.