Thiruvananthapuram: National Crime Records Bureau reported that one child goes missing every 8 minutes in India. It is found that over one lakh children go missing every year across the country. In Kerala, 487 children went missing in 2019. At the same time, 30 child missing cases were reported in the state in a month.

The government launched an official website ‘track child’ to trace the missing children with the help of public. As many as 3851 missing children were registered in the website from Kerala. Among the missing children, 3163 children were located. But there is no clue on 688 children.

13 girls go missing within 15 days in Kerala

From 6-yr-old Abhirami to 17-yr-old Jyothika, 13 girls went missing from their houses in Kerala within 15 days.

According to reports, 205 children were kidnapped from Kerala in 2018. Among them, 191 children were girls. At the same time, 578 children kidnapping cases were registered in Kerala from May 2016 to 2019.

According to police, such a huge number of kidnapping cases are recorded as most of the elopement cases are registered as kidnapping cases. Hence, police asserted that there is no need to panic on kidnapping cases.

According to reports, girls were among the majority of children who went missing. In India, 57,187 children went missing or abducted. Among them, 44,209 were girls.

Maharashtra and other north Indian states recorded the highest number of missing children. In Maharashtra, 10,623 children went missing in 2018. Among them 767 were girls. Delhi, Bihar, Uttar Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh are the other states where the highest number of girls went missing.

Meanwhile, 341 children went missing in Tamil Nadu. Among them, 328 were girls. However, the lowest number of child missing cases were reported from north-eastern states. In 2018, only 4 boys went missing from Mizoram.