The Supreme Court on Tuesday called for a deeper probe into the statistics of missing children and directed the Center to analyze whether the cases are spread over a particular region, state or across the country to enable effective coordination for their recovery and crackdown on organized gangs involved in such crimes.
The court posted the matter for March 10. (file image)A bench of Justices BV Nagarathna and Ujjal Bhuyan asked, “Does a pattern emerge from the data received so far,” which in December 2025 directed the Center to collect data on missing children from January 1, 2020 to December 31, 2025 and update the status of adjudication of these cases.
Examining the matter in a Public Interest Litigation (PIL) filed by non-profit organization Guria Swayam Seva Sansthan, the court order said that data collection is one aspect for which directions can be issued to states/UTs, but it is equally important to analyze the same for collection of trends.
“The data needs to be analyzed to identify whether an emerging pattern is observed state-wise, region-wise or across the country,” the bench observed, as it directed the states and union territories to positively provide the data to the nodal officer appointed by the Mission Batsalya portal under the supervision of the Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA).
Additional Solicitor General (ASG) Aishwarya Bhatti, appearing for the Centre, said, “12 states/UTs have not provided data on missing children while 14 are yet to grant trial status to the case.
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The court posted the matter for March 10 and issued a warning to the states/UTs to cooperate. Directing the Center to communicate the order to all non-compliant states/UTs, the order said, “If the necessary information is not submitted to the Center by the next date of hearing, this court will have no option but to take serious action.”
The affidavit filed by the MHA has provided information on missing children from 24 states and Union Territories which has revealed a disturbing pattern of missing, recovered and still-untraceable children in the last five years. The states/UTs which are yet to respond include Delhi, Maharashtra, Assam, West Bengal, Jammu and Kashmir (UT), Punjab, Gujarat, Tamil Nadu, Odisha, among others.
Bihar, for example, has proved to be the most notorious of the states that have responded so far The state witnessed a steady increase in complaints of missing children recorded at 4,868 (2020), 3,870 (2021), 7,472 (2022), 8,933 (2023), 12,443 (2024) and 16,390 (2025). Due to police efforts, some children were returned to the custody of parents or child care homes. But the statistics that can’t be found are equally startling. By the end of December 2025, 8,857 children are unaccounted for in the state.
“Based on the statistics provided you have to analyze the pattern and see whether there is an all-India network or whether the network (involved in child abduction or trafficking) is confined to a state or territory,” the bench said.
“What steps have you taken to break the network? When you look for missing children, what information do you get from them? You have to interview these children. It will help your investigation,” the court asked Bhatti.
Senior advocate Aparna Bhat, appearing for the petitioner, pointed out that data needs to be segregated on the basis of age as well. He said, there is evidence that organized gangs are involved in child abduction for various purposes. Where newborns and babies as young as three are abducted for adoption and minor girls are abducted for illicit trafficking.
He also mentioned that the current petition seeks to obtain data and use it to curb the menace of child trafficking, which is a stark reality in the society. The data provided in the MHA affidavit also reveals that after Bihar, the states with the highest number of unaccompanied children are Madhya Pradesh (2,825), Chhattisgarh (1,712), Haryana (1,434) and Rajasthan (754).
Bihar and Chhattisgarh did not provide information on the status of prosecutions so it is not known how many cases have been convicted or acquitted.
The current PIL is pending before this court since 2024 and in the past a special agency like the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) has been suggested to probe the matter as it has inter-state and even foreign connections. However, the court proposed to strengthen the existing system by appointing nodal officers across each state and district.
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The Center launched the Khoa Paya Portal in 2015 to serve as a centralized database dealing exclusively with missing children. However, it did not yield results as the portal failed to ensure inter-state coordination of investigations.
Also, MHA has launched a national level communication platform – Crime Multi Agency Center (Cri-MAC) in 2020. To share information on real-time basis of significant crimes including cases of human trafficking to the police in the country.
In June 2013 all States and Union Territories were advised by the MHA to set up Anti-Human Trafficking Units (AHTU) in each district to address the prevention and prosecution aspects of child trafficking cases. The advisory also states that if a child is missing for four months, the case will be referred to the AHTU.
According to the Crime in India 2022 report, the all-India figure for “unrecovered child” victims of abduction and abduction from previous years is 51,100.
