Naazneen clearly remembers the ill-fated night of October 12, 2009, when her younger daughter Teba, 3, went missing from a party the family was attending. Shahid Khan, Teba’s father, saw a man in the party talking to his small daughter and took it as a normal interaction between a grown-up man and a sweet little child. But a few moments later, the man and Teba were not to be found. Khan immediately lodged an FIR in Daryaganj police station of Delhi and helped police generate the sketch of the accused. “It has been three years since then but neither Teba nor the man has been traced down by the police. I rush to places whenever I hear about children being rescued from somewhere in the country. In my desperation, I have even visited morgues across the country and have gone to see the corpses of unidentified children in the hope that I may find my little girl someday,” Khan says full of tears.

On 22 August 2011, Sobaran Singh’s four-year-old son Prem went missing from in front of his house in Sangam Vihar of Delhi in broad daylight. The same evening, Singh reported the matter to Sangam Vihar police who refused to file an FIR asking him to first search for the child in his locality. The FIR was lodged by the police after three days only when Singh sat on a fast inside the police station. “Now, the police tell me that my son is not going to return,” says Singh.

Ghamandi Singh, grandfather of little Pankaj, refuses to believe the police when they tell him that his grandson is dead. “How can I believe the police when they have neither recovered my child’s body nor clothes? They can’t even tell me what happened to my child. Was he consumed by the sky? The police are not taking interest in pursuing my case anymore,” says Ghamandi.

Khan, Singh and Ghamandi are not alone. Across the country, parents of 41, 546 children are clueless regarding the whereabouts of their children. On an average, 11 children go missing every hour in the country in which eight of those have no hope for recovery because their case is not registered by the police.

These gruesome facts were brought to light by the NGO Bachpan Bachao Andolan in a report titled “Missing Children of India”, which was released in the national capital on Thursday by justice Altamas Kabir and Kailash Satyarthi, founder of the NGO.

The report is the result of a nationwide study on Indian children who went missing and never returned back. The data was collected through RTI applications during January 2008-2010, from 392 districts across 20 states and four union territories.

According to the data, a total of 1,17,480 children were officially reported missing during these two years. The number was highest in Maharashtra (26,211) closely followed by West Bengal (25,413). While the majority of these children were traced by Bachpan Bachao Andolan and other NGOs, the number of untraced children still stands at 41,546. West Bengal tops the table of untraced children, with 74 percent of those reported missing still untraced. The states that follow West Bengal in this table are Nagaland, Bihar, Jharkhand and Assam.

Out of those children who were traced, while some were reunited with their parents, some others were sent to shelter homes. A large number of these children who were found to be working as bonded labourers and ragpickers refused to go back home.

The report presents a picture completely different from what the National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) has depicted in its report. According to NCRB, only 17,279 children were reported missing (kidnapped, abducted, trafficked, etc) during the period in question, but the figure is just about 40 percent of what has been reported as the figure for untraced children by andolan. Obviously, there is a clear lack of coordination between the police agencies and other government agencies like NCRB.

According to data provided by National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) in reply to an RTI application filed by the andolan, the number of untraced children in the country stood at 20,773 in 2008-09. For 2004-05, the Action Research on Trafficking brought out by NHRC had put the figure at 10,000. This means that in just four years, the number of children who have gone missing has increased by more than 200 percent.

Bachpan Bachao Andolan has not been able to establish the main reason behind the disappearance act. However, it considers trafficking to be the sole culprit. The report mentions bonded labour, commercial sexual exploitation, illegal adoption, organ trade, drug peddling, begging, ragpicking and armed conflicts as the main reason behind trafficking.

The report demands a clear definition of ‘missing children’ in the book of law and emphasises the need for comprehensive standard operative procedures/protocol for addressing the issue.