Mumbai: The Bombay high court has warned the Mumbai police that it will not hesitate to direct the home ministry in taking action against the officials who are responsible for not being able to trace a minor girl who has been missing since the last five years. While taking serious note of it, the court gave a last chance to the police and directed them to file report about it.
A bench of Justices S. C. Dharmadhikari and Bharati Dangre was hearing a plea filed by the mother of the missing girl. As per the plea, the girl was eight-year-old when she had gone missing in 2012. The police initially suspected that neighbours, following a tiff, had kidnapped her, but the officials failed to make any progress in the probe since then.
The court refused to accept that the police had made all possible efforts to trace the girl. The court found that the police had failed to trace girl at place like the construction sites, domestic help agencies, fishing trawlers, illegal distilleries and automobile garages.
“The police machinery folds its hands, saying it is impossible to trace the child. They say, we have done everything that is permissible and possible at their end. The report filed does not indicate that all out efforts were made,” the bench said .
The bench also dismissed the police’s submission that its success rate of tracing missing children had improved from “66 per cent to 89 per cent since June this year,” saying that as long as there existed cases like this one, any statistical achievement was useless.
