Noting that children are most susceptible to unscrupulous elements and cannot knock on doors of courts, Telangana High Court on Thursday instructed State government to constitute Child Welfare Committees in all 33 districts of the State within two weeks.
Passing this interim direction while hearing a batch of PIL pleas and a writ petition on missing children and their exploitation, the HC impleaded Union Ministry of Women and Child Welfare as co-respondent in the matter. The bench comprising Chief Justice Hima Kohli and Justice B. Vijaysen Reddy told senior counsel L. Ravi Chander, representing one of the petitioners, to study the slew of instructions issued by Delhi High Court in a similar matter before presenting his response to the report filed by Telangana Director General of Police.
On learning that the constitution of CWCs was kept pending by the State government, the CJ sought to know from Advocate General B.S. Prasad reasons behind it. “Why this laxity..? We are talking about children who cannot approach the courts for help,” the CJ remarked. As the AG replied that creation of CWCs was in final stages, the CJ instructed that within two weeks they should be formed and made functional as per the Juvenile Justice (Care and Protection of Children) Act.
Referring to the Delhi HC directions in Sadhan Haldar vs the State NCT of Delhi, the CJ said police should effectively use facial recognition software to trace and track missing children. For this, co-ordination with the police of all States and involvement of Union of India was must.
In addition to this, fixing the golden hours for tracing missing children must be analysed, the CJ said. When it comes to issue of tracing missing children “Information Technology is the only way forward,” the CJ remarked. The AG informed the bench that Telangana police were already using Darpan, a similar software, to trace children missing from the State.
The CJ said the issue of missing children should be monitored by the highest level police officers in the State keeping in view the seriousness of unsuspecting children dragged into the vicious circle of exploitation. The pleas were posted to February 25 for next hearing.
