A few years back, in the narrow lanes of North West Delhi’s resettlement colonies, children going missing was very common and was treated almost as an unfortunate fact of life. Families struggling to survive on daily wages often had little time, support, or institutional access to respond when a child suddenly went missing. In neighbourhoods shaped by continuous migration, overcrowding, economic distress, and social vulnerability, children frequently slipped through the cracks – pushed into labour, lured by traffickers, or simply fleeing violence and instability at home.
But today, in several of these mohallas of Jahangirpuri, Azadpur Mandi, and Shahbad Dairy, children themselves have become part of an informal vigilance network working to prevent such disappearances. If a child remains absent from school for several days, word spreads quickly through local children’s groups, women’s collectives, and community volunteers. Concerns are escalated to the appropriate quarters.
And the result? The concerted efforts of CRY – Child Rights and You – and its partner organisation Saksham created an integrated child surveillance system with the help of children, their family members, and the community – an intervention that successfully traced 97 out of 102 missing children and brought them back safely to their families between January 2025 and April 2026.
“If one of our schoolmates doesn’t show up to school for several days, we immediately visit their home, understand the reason, and inform community members and local groups,” says a 15-year-old girl associated with one such children’s collective.
This is not a formal surveillance mechanism run by local authorities. Children, parents, women’s collectives, schools, local organisations, and community volunteers have together built an informal but highly responsive safety net – organically embedded within the community – to prevent children from disappearing into the shadows of trafficking, exploitation, abuse, or neglect.
At a time when India continues to witness a worrying rise in cases related to missing children, this community-driven model emerging from some of Delhi’s most vulnerable settlements offers an important lesson: Child protection cannot succeed through policing alone. It must be rooted within communities themselves.
The scale of the crisis
The latest National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) ‘Crime in India 2024’ report paints a deeply worrying picture. The number of missing children rose from 1,38,609 in 2023 to 1,47,175 in 2024 – an increase of 6.2 per cent. Girls constituted nearly 76 per cent of all missing children, exposing the stark gendered nature of vulnerability.
Delhi is no exception. According to the state-wise figures from the NCRB report, West Bengal recorded the highest share of missing children, followed by Madhya Pradesh, Odisha, Bihar, and Delhi. Thousands of children also remain untraced long after complaints are filed. Yet these numbers alone fail to capture the lived realities behind such incidents.
Children rarely go missing in a vacuum. Poverty, migration, school dropouts, domestic violence, emotional distress, trafficking networks, unsafe labour conditions and fragile family environments often intersect to create pathways of vulnerability.
In urban settlements across Delhi NCR — particularly among migrant and economically marginalised communities — these risks become even sharper. Families struggling for survival often work long hours in informal jobs, leaving children with little supervision or support. Adolescents, especially girls, become vulnerable to trafficking, coercion, online manipulation, or unsafe relationships.
Rebuilding protection from within the community
Places like Jahangirpuri, Shahbad Dairy, and areas surrounding Azadpur Mandi have long grappled with the consequences of rapid urbanisation, migration, overcrowding, and economic distress. On-ground interactions with families, police, and Saksham officials reveal that economic insecurity pushed children towards child labour, migration, and exploitation.
Parvesh Sehgal, a member of the local Child Vigilance Group, shared, “School dropouts, disrupted education, family-based violence layered with unsupervised social media exposure, and unresolved adolescent emotional insecurities often push children to elope or become easy targets for traffickers.” He further added, “Between January 2025 and April 2026, though many of the children were traced, five children remain untraced, including one boy and four girls.”
What has changed in parts of North-West Delhi is not merely the efficiency of rescue operations, but the social response surrounding them. The intervention recognised that tracing children is only one part of the challenge. Equally critical are rehabilitation, psychosocial support, reducing the risk of re-trafficking, restoring education, and rebuilding trust within families and communities.
The intervention, with the support of local schools, the police, the District Child Protection Unit (DCPU), and the Child Welfare Committee (CWC), worked together to facilitate quick reporting, family counselling, and a coordinated response system. In addition to that, the team carried out door-to-door monitoring and awareness sessions on online safety, emotional well-being, and trafficking.
Importantly, children themselves became active participants in the protection ecosystem. Local children’s groups now identify school dropouts, report suspicious activities, support younger children, and alert community members when someone suddenly disappears from school or the neighbourhood. The shift is profound: Children are no longer being treated merely as beneficiaries of protection systems. They are becoming stakeholders in safeguarding their own communities.
Schools played a pivotal role not only through re-enrolment and monitoring of children, but also through empathetic support to continue education and enhance agency, creating a conducive environment for children to come out of trauma. One school teacher described the systemic approach succinctly: “Special attention is now being given to children with prolonged absenteeism. This has resulted in noticeable improvement in children’s school attendance and regular participation in education.”
It is evident that prevention and rescue-rehabilitation mechanisms did not rely solely on institutional intervention but also on informed, participatory, community-driven efforts deeply rooted in collective trust and accountability.
The way forward
To sustain the effort, CRY and Saksham are working with the Vigilance Group and Bal Prahari Group, particularly in vulnerable communities, while strengthening collaboration between civil society, communities, and government departments. They are also conducting awareness drives with parents and organising counselling sessions on child protection, cyber safety, and mental health support for children.
But just community initiatives are not all. The fight against missing children also demands active involvement of decentralised governance and community-based institutional systems. Police ward committees, Panchayats, Mohalla Committees, School Management Committees, and local child protection bodies must come forward to play a transformative role in identifying early signs of vulnerability, monitoring school dropouts, strengthening community vigilance, and ensuring faster reporting and response.
In both rural and urban poor settlements, these institutions are often the first point of contact for distressed families. If properly sensitised and integrated into child protection frameworks, they can function not merely as administrative structures, but as grassroots safety networks capable of addressing safety of children.
It is important that these orchestrated efforts translate into measurable impact rather than remain a series of isolated activities. As such interventions are replicated across other geographies, no more children — especially girls — should have to sink into vulnerability and trauma.
Together, we must act beyond numbers, reports, word-crafts, spreadsheets, and fancy presentations – ensuring a safe and happy childhood at the grassroots level for every child will be the real measure of our success as a society and as a nation.
Puja Marwaha is CEO, CRY – Child Rights and You.