Police cold to misery of parents, say activists

Lack of co-ordination among different wings of the police as well as the cops’ general insensitivity ensures that parents whose children have gone missing have no idea when their misery will end.

The police, however, claim that there is no lack of coordination in the department or among officials responsible for recovering missing children. However, the fact is that the police actually drag their feet when it comes to tracing the missing kids.

Officials claim that as soon as a complaint is lodged at a police station, information about the complaint is passed on to the control room as well as to the control rooms of other states. Yet, the fact remains that the police fail to recover any of the missing kids. "All complaints taken on record are taken seriously and their details are also sent to police control rooms of different states," said AK Jadeja DIG, CID (crime and railways). Jadeja, who supervises the missing people's cell of the police, said there is good co-ordination between missing people's cells of the district police and that of CID (crime).

"They are trained to deal only with criminals and that is why they behave in the same way even with deeply unhappy parents," he said.

Sanjay Joshi, convener, Human Rights Committee of India, said that parents and NGOs believe that the police add to the plight of parents by their insensitive behaviour.

"Almost no child has been recovered by the police on their own. The missing children who were recovered actually came back themselves. They were never contacted by the police," Joshi alleged. But the police say they have to follow procedure even in the matter of missing children. "We have to investigate according to the procedure laid down for missing people. We record statements, ask questions from people who may have information about the missing person, and then begin investigation," a police officer said.