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Bhubaneswar: The Odisha State Commission for Protection of Child Rights (OSCPCR) Wednesday wrote a letter to Odisha Police recommending strengthening of police intervention on the issue of missing children.
In a letter to Director General of Police (DGP) Abhay, OSCPCR chairperson Sandhyabati Pradhan said that Odisha Police has taken a strong and proactive approach in handling missing children cases, due to which a number of children have been rescued in last few months. “This we appreciate very much. However, there is need to continue this spirit and also bring some changes in the approach,” said Pradhan.
She recommended a few points for consideration and necessary action such as directions to be issued to all police stations to prioritise the missing cases of children, work out case-specific strategy to track and rescue. The progress can be reviewed on a monthly basis. All these cases must be registered in the website.
Apart from this, review and rework the standard operating procedure (SOP) for dealing with case of a missing child issued by Crime Branch October 9, 2014. The SOP can be more holistic to cover preventive measures, proactive measures for gathering information and registered FIR, building convergence with other Acts, schemes, programmes and departments for the rehabilitation of the recovered children is also recommended by commission in the letter.
Building coordination among the Panchayat Level Child Protection Committees formed as per Integrated Child Protection Scheme (ICPS) and Ama Police Samiti to create awareness on the safety and security of the children and also track the children in a day to day basis.
Earlier, the commission had urged MLAs to dedicate a day for children, involve a child from each GP in governance and make the constituencies child-friendly.
