RPF helps reuniting a lost child in Dadar

MUMBAI: NP NEWS 24 ONLINE – More than half of the world’s population currently lives in urban areas and the United Nations (UN) expects that proportion to increase to 66 per cent by 2050. India’s financial capital Mumbai, home to 31,700 people per square kilometre stands second in the most crowded state always makes way for getting lost in the city.

An alarming case came forwards after a four-year-old girl was found all alone inside an elevator at Mumbai’s most overcrowded station, Dadar station earlier this month. When railway protection force (RPF) sub-inspector Vineeta Shukla asked the little child for her name, all she could say was that she wanted an ice-cream. Shukla scanned all around the station several times to find the girl’s parents but it was ineffective.

Shukla told that it was late evening when she called up Dongri children’s home to send the girl to a shelter home. The staff informed Shukla that a vegetable vendor from Dadar had enquired them about her daughter who went missing when she was buying her an ice-cream.

Shukla works with a team that looks around station areas between Parel and Sion for lost and runaway children and tries to reunite them with their families. The RPF team stationed at Dadar have handled more than 50 cases of missing children in 2018. Reuniting children with their families is not an easy task. While small children do not know their parents’ names or contact details, teenagers who have fled or are star struck and left home to meet a celebrity do not easily give away information.

Another RPF officer said that every child had to be handled differently. Some children open up after having a good meal while others might refuse to go back home if they had been abused. In the latter cases, Child Welfare Committee is informed.

Apparently, railway authorities were not always concerned about handling missing children cases until government’s initiative Operation Muskaan was introduced three years ago to rescue and rehabilitate children. To sensitise security forces, workshops were conducted. Help desks were set up at stations to by the women and child development ministry so as to coordinate between NGOs and the RPF.