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.

The government counsel sought time to furnish police station-wise details of missing children and those traced. The court directed that the Union of India too should be impleaded in the PIL petitions.

Status report on loan apps

Hearing a separate PIL petition on the online loan app companies, the bench instructed the Director General of Police to file a fresh status report having taken on record the report presented on Thursday. The bench said the police should explain in the next status report the action initiated against two mobile loan app companies which continued their operations without getting registered with the Reserve Bank of India.

The DGP, in his report, stated that information furnished by Google Playstore was analysed. The 180 mobile phone numbers used by loan app operators to lure gullible people were identified. Two Chinese nationals, who had partnered with Indians, to operate the apps had fled the country.

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