Dwaipayan Ghosh, TNN; Apr 2, 2011,
NEW DELHI: Over 175 parents, whose children had gone missing in the city in the past 10 years, assembled at Jantar Mantar on Friday under the auspices of Bachpan Bachao Andolan (BBA). Kid sisters and brothers of their missing siblings from some of the worst affected areas like northwest Delhi (Jahangipuri), Outer Delhi (Aman Vihar, Sultanpuri) and Sangam Vihar (south Delhi) were in attendance.
The time that has lapsed since they went missing has not lessened the grief of the relatives of the children. A case in point was Tajwar, who had gone to attend a close family friend's wedding at a popular banquet hall of Daryaganj. "Around midnight, she turned around to reach for her three-year-old grand-daughter Taba, who was playing behind her back. "The next moment she was gone. It was over one-and-a-half years ago. Since then I have approached Delhi Police, CBI and even the CM's office. Taba never came back," said Tajwar, barely able to control her tears.
Sitting next to her was Beena who had taken her three-year-old niece for treatment at Sanjay Gandhi Hospital. A self-proclaimed hospital staffer cajoled her that she could leave her niece with him as she went about getting her OPD card on March 24 this year. She agreed unsuspectingly and never saw her niece after that.
Mahesh, just one year old, was playing outside his house in H block of Sultanpuri when his mother Laxmi went inside to get some coins to pay a vendor. When she came back, her child was gone. It has been 10 years since then. The cops have told her "You stand no chance of seeing your child again".
The nearly 200 protesters said they were parents of the "Nowhere children – children who are neither counted in the census nor are allowed the Right To Education (RTE)".
Already this year 490 children have gone missing in the city alone and 164 countrywide. That's more than five children going missing per day in this city. Said Rakesh Senger, officer with BBA, "Only 17-18% of these children have been found. Our RTI query has revealed that in the past three years (the figures of 2010 are not complete), over 13,750 children have gone missing in Delhi. Less than 15% are found and reunited with their relatives. We want a strict policy on which Parliament and Delhi Police pay more attention".
The parents said they would now move the Supreme Court and march to Parliament during its next session demanding amendment to its anti-trafficking laws, an increase budgetary allocation and instituting of a national agency which will probe all missing children cases.
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