Operation ‘Muskan-II’ to trace missing children begins

Cuttack: A fresh round of Operation ‘Muskan’ to trace missing children in and outside Odisha began today in Cuttack. As part of the operation, teams will go outside the State in search of missing children from Odisha.

Accourding to sources, the operation is a joint initiative by the Crime Branch and Labour and Child Welfare departments. The operation, which, will be carried out in two phases, will start from July 25 and continue till August 24. the search operation will be conducted within the state in the first phase scheduled to be undertaken between July 25 and August 9. In the second phase between August 10 and August 24, teams will visit other states to trace missing children.

As per sources, 10 special teams have been constituted for the purpose. These teams will visit states like Andhra Pradesh, Maharashtra, Jharkhand, Tamil Nadu amongst others to trace the missing children, informed Crime Branch DG BK Sharma.

“This operation Muskan-II will continue for one month. This is being carried out by in collaboration between the Crime Branch and the State government’s Women and Child welfare department. There will be two phases. In the first phase we will try to find the missing children within the State. In the second phase, 10 teams including police and representatives of the Labour, Women and Child Welfare departments will go outside the state based on the information on missing children available with us from our complaint-registration website and rescue them. They will be rescued, brought back to Odisha and will be rehabilitated. In January 2016, under operation Smile-I, 515 missing children were rescued and rehabilitated. Out of these, around 185 children were rescued from outside the State,” said Crime Branch IG Asit Panigrhi.