HC seeks status report on missing children in State

Court wants to know what steps are taken against child traffickers in each police station area

Telangana High Court on Thursday instructed the State government to file a comprehensive status report on missing children in the State. Hearing a batch of PIL pleas on missing children, the High Court wanted to know what steps the government was taking against child traffickers in each police station area in the State. A bench of Chief Justice Hima Kohli and Justice B. Vijaysen Reddy directed the government to explain how it was dealing with the missing children issue. Noting that the State Legal Services Authority had a critical role to play in the matter, the bench directed that it should be impleaded in the PIL petitions. How the Juvenile Justice Boards, Child Welfare Committees and Legal Services Authority were co-ordinating with one another was also crucial. The bench noted that the State should first have data of how many children from each police station jurisdiction in the State had gone missing. “How many of them were traced and reunited with their families,” the CJ asked the government. The government should monitor the status of the children who got reunited with the families. This was important in the backdrop of the findings in some instances that rescued children had disappeared again. “This could be due to the approach of the parents and families of the missing children,” the bench observed. The bench felt that the police department should use the latest version of the tracking software to trace the missing children.