Delhi Woman Cop Gets ‘Promoted Out Of Turn’ For Tracing 76 Missing Children In 3 Months

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The statistics and story behind India's missing children point out that trafficking is a lucrative industry. A nationwide trade that is damaging and destroying children and separating them from their families and future. While some end up as sex workers, others in domestic slavery or forced labour.

Human trafficking is a structured nexus and therefore, the longer a cop takes to investigate, the less likely the child will ever be traced or found. According to a BBC report, it is estimated that a child goes missing in India every eight minutes. Neither there is any political will to end it nor there is any public outrage, probably because it doesn't dominate headlines.

According to 2019 data, 3336 children were traced out of 5412 kids who had gone missing: or 62 % of the missing children were traced by the Delhi Police. This year till October, a total of 2629 children were traced by Delhi Police out of 3507 missing.

At a time when hope seemed empty and the nation was shrouded with a sense of despair, a woman police officer risked her life to save 76 missing children where 56 of them were aged below 14 years and all of this happened in a span of 3 months. These missing children have been traced not just from Delhi, but from other states such as West Bengal and Punjab.

In a first, Seema Dhaka, who is posted as Head Constable at northwest Delhi's Samaypur Badli Police station 'is the first police personnel of Delhi Police, who has been given OTP (out-of-turn promotion) for tracing and recovering missing children under the incentive scheme,' mentioned an NDTV report. 'When we join police force, we're aware of the challenges involved, and we're aware of the risk to our lives. That doesn't deter us,' she added.

A farmer's daughter from Uttar Pradesh, Ms haka has an eight-year-old son and in an interview to NDTV, she mentioned that the acknowledgement of her efforts has greatly motivated her.

Delhi Police took it to Twitter to share the news. 'Women HC Seema Dhaka, PS Samaypur Badli, deserves congratulations for being the first police person to be promoted out of turn for recovering 56 children in 3 months under incentive scheme. Hats off to fighting spirit and joy brought to families,' said the post.

According to the official statement, the new incentive scheme came into effect on August 5. "In order to motivate the police personnel to trace or recover the children, who have gone missing from their home, the Commissioner of Police issued an incentive scheme on 5th August' 2020 to the effect that ...any Constable/Head Constable who recovers 50 or more missing children below the age of 14 years (15 children out of them of the age group less than 08 years) within a period of 12 calendar months will be considered for the grant of out of turn promotion".