Minor Missing Since 2017: It Shows Negligent Attitude And Incompetence Of UP Police In Cases Of Missing Children: Allahabad High Court

The Bench of Justice Salil Kumar Rai further remarked,

"The failure of the Uttar Pradesh Police or any department attached with it to recover the corpus and to produce it before this Court even though the petition was filed in 2019 and the corpus has been missing since 2017 does not speak well of the Uttar Pradesh Police and its officers."

The matter before the Court

The grievance of the petitioner in this case was that the detenu Anchal @ Gaurav, who is Ramesh Chandra's son, had gone missing. Later on, it came to the knowledge of Ramesh Chandra that his son had been forcibly detained by respondent No.4, Ramveer. An FIR against an unknown offender had been lodged and during the investigation of that FIR, a Final Report was submitted. In compliance with the notice issued by the Court, an affidavit/progress report dated 17.07.2019, was filed by the State.

The Court found it "utterly unsatisfactory" and the Court on Tuesday (10^th November) had remarked,

"A citizen cannot be allowed to disappear. The compliance report is no more than a reproduction of the investigation into the crime, which does little service to tracing out, recovering and producing the detenu."

Court Proceedings on 26^th November

Later on, by way of filing an affidavit, it was informed to the Court that "the case has been handed over to the C.B./C.I.D. at the instance of the National Human Rights Commission." The Court directed that matter be put up again on 16.12.2020.

The Court has directed the Superintendent of Police, C.B./C.I.D., District-Kanpur Nagar to produce the corpus, i.e., Anchal@Gaurav in the Court.

The Superintendent of Police, C.B./C.I.D., District-Kanpur Nagar has also been directed to be personally present in the Court on 16^th December.

It may be noted that the Madhya Pradesh High Court (Gwalior Bench) had recently rapped the Superintendent of Police, Bhind stating that "he has already lost the confidence of this Court."

The court also reprimanded the Police team/officers as they failed in their duty to trace out the missing corpus/minor girl and secure her presence.

The bench of Justice G.S. Ahluwalia stated,

"It appears that all the time, the police was merely making formalities for searching out the missing corpus as well as the respondent No.6. The father of the missing corpus/petitioner had also informed the police about the phone call made by the missing corpus and the location of the said mobile phone was also verified by the police but still, thereafter they did not do anything for the last more than five months on the pretext that they were afraid of COVID-19 pandemic." (emphasis supplied)

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