Every year, the mystery deepens. If there is one thing which still perplexes the police and the people, it’s about a large number of children who go missing from their houses every year. No part of India is immune from this scary phenomenon. What’s more frightening is that many children end up doing forced labour, slavery, and even sex work.
Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath decided to do something about the missing children. Acting under ‘Operation Muskaan’, an initiative of the Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) to rescue/rehabilitate missing children, Mr. Adityanath directed the ADG Railways to run an operation to counter this evil crime. The operation has been a huge success. In mere 20 days’ time, 82 missing children have been traced and brought back to their homes. A large part of the credit for the successful execution of the operation goes to IPS Ashish Tiwari, SP Railways (Jhansi & Agra ).
A SPECIAL TASK FORCE
To make the operation successful, a list of all the missing children from all the districts and the Government Railway Police (GRP ) police station was created. The list included a total of 231 missing children and an SOP (Standard Operating Procedure) was prepared, which needed to be followed by the police force.
Under the leadership of Mr. Tiwari, a dedicated team was created in which police officers who wanted to contribute in the operation from GRP Jhansi and Agra were selected through an interview. The selected police personnel were divided into four teams (two in Agra and two in Jhansi) and were soon informed about the various laws related to children protection such as the Protection of Child Rights Act 2005, Juvenile Justice (Care and Protection of Children) Act 2000, Child Wages (Prohibition and Regulation) Act 1986, POCSO Act 2012 etc.
Not only this but as per the SOP created to find the missing children, a workshop was held for the selected police officers. In this workshop, they were trained through visiting possible hideouts where they could find these children, such as bus stands, railway stations, etc.
THE EXECUTION
After the completion of training, the selected officers were sent to the allotted districts of Uttar Pradesh like Agra, Mathura, Hathras, Etah, Kasganj, Firozabad, Aligarh, Mainpuri, Etawah, Farrukhabad, Banda, Jalaun, Lalitpur, Hamirpur, Kanpur, Jhansi, Mahoba, Chitrakoot in the first phase.
In the second phase, the teams fanned out in major cities like Delhi, Faridabad, Palwal, Gurgaon, Ghaziabad, Gwalior, Bhopal, Indore and Mumba. The operation is still continuing in these places.
The operation in the first phase was successfully conducted as the selected officers managed to find more than 100 missing children, from which around 81 children have been sent back to their homes. The second phase is under process and the third phase will start after the completion of the second phase. Cities such as Kolkata, Chennai, and Gujarat will be targeted in the third phase.
THE MOMENT OF HAPPINESS
After the successful first phase of `Operation Muskan’, heart-warming videos of children returning back to their homes started surfacing on social media platforms. One of the children, recognized as Sachin, had been for the past two years and the family had already given up all hope of finding him again. How happy and surprised it was to see the boy back in their lives!
Another video that went viral on Twitter was of a missing child named Kanha. He went missing for more than six months and when the Agra team found him in a children’s home, they got to know that the child belongs to a town called Etmadpur. However, neither they nor the boy knew the actual address. The team took the boy to Etmadpur and asked hundreds of people and finally got the address. The moment was very touching as it was a miracle for the family to see their kid after six months without any hope of meeting him again.
Under the leadership of Mr. Ashish Tiwari, the distressed families got back their smiles and the purpose of the operation was served. Mr. Tiwari has now been posted as the first commandant in the newly formed Special Security Force (SSF) in Uttar Pradesh.
