After six week-long watch, no organised gang of beggars found

Separate teams of crime branch were monitoring three intersections in the National Capital specially at IIT crossing, Pusa Road and Hari Nagar jail road crossing to check the children who were found begging on the street.

Deputy Commissioner of Police (crime) Joy Tirkey told Millennium Post that in October 2017, the team had kept a watch for more than six weeks to observe on these children whether they were forced for begging by any gang.

"Team kept a continuous watch on them and at the end, we found that these children live there only with their families and there was no gang behind them," said the DCP.

Anti-Human Trafficking Unit (AHTU) of crime branch has been involved in investigating the cases of organised natures of Human Trafficking and also make a special drive for tracing of untraced missing children.

Analysis of reasons behind missing children reveals that in most of the cases children go missing after being scolded by parents at home, due to academic pressure, losing their way, elopement.

Along with the district police, the Crime Branch team started searching missing children under Operation Muskan-II and Smile-II.

Police teams visited various shelter homes and spoke with children to find out about their residential addresses so that they could be reunited with their families. In 2016, the team reunited 5,109 children whereas 4,047 children were traced and reunited with their families in 2017.

2016 also saw around 6921 children being reported missing, while 6,155 children were reported missing in 2017.

The scheme Pehchaan also continued throughout the year 2017 and children from under privileged sections were photographed in order to maintain a data bank which could be used to trace the children in case he or she was ever reported missing.

1,85,122 children have been photographed under this scheme so far.