Haryana Police has succeeded in bringing back the lost smiles amongst 10,000 plus families by tracing and reuniting 10,868 missing children and adults with their families in 2021. The traced children include 3,839 boys and 7,029 girls who have been missing for a long period of time. Sharingthe information here today, Director General of Police (DGP) Haryana, PK Agrawal said that Police has also tracked and rescued 1,813 child beggars and 2021 child labourers who were found doing odd jobs for their livelihood.
Tracing and reuniting missing children, missing women, and children in need of care and protection were among the top priorities of the Police during the second wave of COVID-19 pandemic. Out of the total, 9,372 missing persons were traced by the Police field units, while the remaining 1496 missing persons were found during the search operations conducted by Haryana Police Anti-Human Trafficking Units (AHTU) with keen interest and dedication, the DGP said.
Describing the prime objective of this noble cause, the DGP said that the role of the Police was also to provide care and protection to the children and adults who went missing and could not be identified immediately.
“Such persons were put in shelter homes after being produced before the respective Child Welfare Committee. This helped us in preventing child trafficking and saving innocent lives from any mishaps such as begging, forced marriages, forced labor, domestic workers, etc,” he said.
“Our police teams visit public places like bus stands, railway stations, and various religious places, besides the institutions such as shelter homes to search for missing children/persons. These drives are mostly carried out in collaboration with Child Welfare Councils, Non-Government Organizations (NGO), and other concerned departments,” the DGP added.
He particularly mentioned AHTU’s ASI Rajesh Kumar, who is rendering a yeoman service in bringing back smiles on the faces of hundreds of families through this noble cause. A national-level publication has recently featured the reuniting stories of Rajesh in its latest book.