MUMBAI: For the past few days, Qamar Alam Khan has been digging out posters from all over his 10×15 sq feet home at Bandra’s Dargah Gully. “Meri Muskaan bhi mil jayegi,” he says confidently, referring to his daughter who has been missing since 2010, and for whom he had got the posters printed.
For five to six years after Muskaan’s disappearance, Khan travelled across the country, taking off to a new location every time someone called up and reported that a young girl had been spotted alone. “Phir sab ruk gaya,” he says, as leads began to dry up. Now, news reports about Andheri teen Pooja Gaud being found nine years after her abduction have given Khan hope again.
Around 950 children were kidnapped from Mumbai (an abduction case is registered by the police when a child under 18 goes missing), in the first six months of this year. Investigators managed to track down 80% of them.
Muskaan was six when she accompanied her parents to a relative’s place in Nala Sopara for Eid on September 11, 2010. Khan says he remembers the day like it was yesterday. “The elders had returned from namaaz and the kids went downstairs to play on their own. While the rest of her cousins returned home later, Muskaan did not,” he says. The family checked every inch of the neighbourhood before making announcements in the local mosque and at sarvajanik Ganpati pandals. “I couldn’t go back home without her so I lived out of Nala Sopara for the next two years,” said Khan, a welder by profession. He got posters and cards printed with Muskaan’s picture, offering a reward to whoever found her, and gave out advertisements in newspapers and television. “I’ve travelled to Bengaluru, Delhi, Hyderabad, Kolkata looking for her. Aaj bhi uski bahut yaad aati hai,” he said, eyes welling up.
Colaba-resident Vinod Gupta has been on a similar quest, as Khan, looking for his missing autistic son, Tarun. Gupta who has travelled “27 states and covered 63,000 kms” since Tarun’s disappearance in 2019, says he has exhausted all his savings and is deep in debt, but won’t stop looking. “I’m convinced I will find him,” says the father of three who has narrowly escaped death in a Naxalite area of Chhattisgarh where he dodged a CRPF nakabandi to enter a village and talk to people.
Gupta and two of his friends have worked out a system. They travel by road, visit new locations on the way and show Tarun’s pictures to as many people as they can. “We visit dhabas, hospitals, railway stations, children’s shelters, small shops and always make it a point to speak to street dwellers as they are in the know if someone is new to the streets,” Gupta said.
Tarun was playing in Colaba on October 1, 2019, when an election rally passed by. He joined them and at CST, got into a Panvel train. He stayed at Panvel station for two days where an RPF staffer forced him to board a Sawantwadi-bound train instead of reporting him to a child welfare NGO. Tarun was last captured in a CCTV grab at Sawantwadi railway station on October 3, 2019, before he boarded the Janshatabdi Express for Mumbai.
“Losing Tarun has impacted us as a family. My wife has started to suffer from high diabetes. We have stopped celebrating festivals and going for outings,” said Gupta. He doesn’t remember the last time he and his family shared a laugh.
“Nothing comes close to the pain of losing a child. You keep punishing yourself but the guilt stays,” says Hemlata Verma from Gazdar Bandh in Santacruz whose six-year-old son, Krish, went missing in 2012. Suffering from a toothache, Krish had insisted on waiting for his father to return home from work so they could go to the chemist together and buy an ice-cream along with medicines. “I should have agreed to get him the ice-cream and gone to the store with him. I cannot stop cursing myself,” Verma says. Krish went to the neighbourhood temple to wait for his father and was never seen again. Verma’s visits to the temple became less frequent as time passed. “I’m not convinced he got lost. He knew his way around Santacruz very well. He was a bright boy and used to rank among the top three students in his class,” she said.
“Children could be kidnapped and used by organised gangs for begging and trafficking or there are instances of runaway children. Police follow the SOP, but consistency is an issue. Police are stretched with limited resources and manpower so following up every case till the end could become a problem,” said former DGP D Sivanandhan.
From 2015 till date, the Mumbai Police claim to have traced nearly 4,500 missing kids as part of a special project ‘Operation Smile’. After Gaud was found, the police have relaunched the project. The Vermas have begun visiting their neighbourhood temple again.
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