Website data on missing kids not updated since 2007: HC told

Ahmedabad, Jul 13: The Gujarat government on Wednesday told the High Court that the data related to missing children from the state posted on the website managed by the Union Women and Child Development Ministry had not been updated since 2007.

The government gave this information in an affidavit filed before a division bench of chief justice R Subhash Reddy and justice Vipul M Pancholi. Last month, the Gujarat High Court had directed the state government to file an affidavit on the number of missing children in the state.

The direction had been given based on a PIL which claimed that over 22,000 children had gone missing in the state in last one year.

"The total figure of missing children from 2007 till date has been put up on the website without regularly revising it, which is why the number appears large," the government said in the affidavit. However, the affidavit did not provide any specific number of missing children.

The PIL, filed by Girish Das, had said that according to a website on missing children managed by the Union Ministry of Women and Child Development, more than 22,000 children went missing in Gujarat between May 2015 and May 2016, of whom only 11,066 were found.

Das had raised a question on the "staggering high number of children missing in the state" and sought the court's direction to the police to file FIR for each missing child complaint. He had also sought the court's direction to Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) to restart the missing children cell.

The cell was started some years ago by CBI on the direction of the Delhi High Court but was stopped as the government failed to provide the right infrastructure, the PIL states.

PTI