Mumbai: In December, GRP rescues 643 children, repatriates 481

Mumbai GRP Commissioner Ravindra Sengaonkar said many of these children run away to Mumbai in search of work. “One reason for children arriving in Mumbai from within Maharashtra, and other states, is an attraction towards the city. Some run away from home because they are scared of their parents or misled by friends,” he said.

A Women and Juvenile Cell functions at each railway police station in the city’s suburban railway network. Shendage said in the holiday season, many children were found at CSMT, Churchgate, Mumbai Central, Dadar and Lokmanya Tilak Terminus, where inter-state trains originate, terminate and pass through.

“Local children sometimes get separated from parents because they cannot board crowded trains,” Shendage said. In such cases, she added, police is able to locate the families as the children themselves provide phone numbers and addresses.

In case these children hail from other parts of the state or country, they are produced before the Child Welfare Committee, which places them in shelter homes and contacts its counterparts in the region the children are from. From last month’s operation, the police is yet to trace families of 162 children, Sengaonkar said.

In 2019, the GRP rescued 3,227 children and is yet to repatriate 206 of them. Data from the last three years shows that a majority of these children belong to Maharashtra, Uttar Pradesh, Bihar and West Bengal.