Woman cop traces 76 missing children, gets out-of-turn promotion

New Delhi; Woman Head constable Seema Dhaka of police station Samaypur Badli has become the first Delhi Police officer to get out-of-turn promotion for tracing missing children under the incentive scheme announced by Delhi Police commissioner S.N. Shrivastava. She has traced 76 missing children and 56 of them are below the age of 14 years.

These missing children have been traced not just from Delhi, but from other states such as Punjab and West Bengal.

"These 76 children were reported missing from various police stations of Delhi and W/HC Seema Dhaka had put sincere and painstaking efforts and traced them within a span of two and half months from Delhi and other states," said Anil Mittal, Additional PRO Delhi police.

In order to motivate police personnel to trace or recover children who have gone missing from their homes, the Commissioner of Police has issued an incentive scheme on August 5, 2020 to the effect that "Any Constable or 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 8 years) within a period of 12 calendar months will be considered for the grant of out-of-turn promotion".

Further, those who trace more than 15 children in the same period shall be given 'Asadharan Karya Puraskar'. This order has brought a sea change in tracing or recovery of missing children and more and more children have been traced since August 2020.

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.