Afroz Alam Sahil and Tarique Anwar, BeyondHeadlines
New Delhi: In a disturbing disclosure that raises questions on taking stock of the law and order situation in Bihar state of India, it has come to light that the Crime Branch of the Bihar Police does not have the number of children below 16 years who have been abducted in the last five years.
In response to an RTI application filed by BeyondHeadlines asking for state specific data on abductions, the Superintendent of Police (SP), Crime Branch Patna, has replied that the data is unavailable. The following question of the number of boys and girls, hence, made no sense.
Subsequently, the department also does not have the number of the first information reports (FIRs) registered in such cases nor does it know the number of cases in which investigation is being done.
However, the Crime Branch is aware that in the last five years, a total of 2,451 children have been rescued from the abductors. But again, they are not aware of what happened to these children after they were rescued as they do not know how many were handed over to their families.
On further question for the number of children killed in the abduction cases or still missing, the SP has informed that 54 children were killed in the last five years while 484 were still missing.
Moreover, the Bihar Police also does not have the information on where from the children were rescued and in what condition.
