New Delhi: In revelations that would jolt the public conscience, India's rights watchdog has found that thousands of children, mostly from poor families, are kidnapped or murdered in the country each year.
According to the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC), 14,975 children go missing in India on an average every year. Of these, as many as 11,008 remain untraced. Experts feel the real figures could be much higher.
While the brutal abuse and killings of children, mainly girls, from Nithari slum in Noida, on the edge of the capital, have rocked the nation, it has brought to the surface certain issues that experts say need to be addressed immediately.
In a bid to understand the magnitude of crimes committed against children in India, several child rights activists, members of civil society and people from the government came together at a meeting organised by the Centre for Social Research (CSR) here.
Alarming facts
The meeting, "Missing Children in India", raised some alarming facts. The government quotes the National Crimes Bureau (NCB) figures as showing that 1,327 children were murdered in the country in 2005, up from 1,304 in 2004, an increase of 1.8 per cent.
But there is no consolidated data on the number of missing children every year. And whatever is there in hand, according to Ranjana Kumari of CSR, "is not credible". Razia Ismail Abbasi of the India Alliance for Child Rights, asserts that since most children from poor families do not even get registered at birth, it is as if they never exist officially.
