The Supreme Court on Wednesday asked the central government to create a dedicated online platform to trace missing children adding that the Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) can depute an officer to enable effective coordination between states for the same.
The court was hearing a public interest litigation (PIL) filed by a non-profit organisation Guria Swayam Sevi Sansthan which flagged the rising cases of missing children reported from several states, who remain untraced.
A bench of justices BV Nagarathna and R Mahadevan said, “Presently, there is lack of coordination and a coordinated effort between police units in tracking children across states and union territories due to which trafficked children are not recovered in time or not at all recovered.”
The court shared the idea of having a common platform where police of every state/UT can integrate information about missing children and share common strategies of investigation.
“In order to have a coordinated endeavour to find missing children, we feel it is essential for a common portal by the Union of India where a dedicated officer could be in charge of putting information of missing children and disseminating information that could be processed by officers in every state/UT,” the bench said.
Additional solicitor general (ASG) Aishwarya Bhati, appearing for Centre, said that she will take instructions on the court’s proposal and file a response.
“I will discuss with the officers and formulate a plan and even consult states,” Bhati said.
The court will hear the matter next on the third week of October.
The court said that it was not keen on entrusting this task to the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) which is already burdened.
“There must be a network for police to connect across all states where trafficking of children is happening. Sometimes, the gangs which operate in this field are able to take them from one state to another, or to a state in another zone, or even overseas. Something needs to be worked out,” the court said.
Senior advocate Aparna Bhatt assisting the court as amicus curiae said that it was keeping this intention, the Centre had launched the Khoya Paya Portal in 2015 to serve as a centralised database exclusively dealing with missing children. However, the same has not yielded results as the portal did not provide for inter-state coordination of investigation.
“The traffickers are ahead of law. The petitioner organisation has produced similarity of operations in numerous instances of missing children in Uttar Pradesh and Telangana,” Bhatt said.