PUNE: As many as 27 families from various parts of the country were reunited with their missing children under Operation Muskan of the Pune city police in July. 

Most of the children belonged to Maharashtra, Uttar Pradesh, Karnataka and West Bengal. 

The police officials said that most children had left home due to poverty or dispute with family members. The children were either found begging or at railway stations. After being rescued by Non Governmental Organisations (NGOs), they were housed at observation homes.

Senior Police Inspector Sanjay Patil, in-charge of social security cell, said, “We visited various shelter homes and found out where the children hail from. After verifying with the local police stations, their parents were called and reunited with their children.”

The operation was part of a statewide hunt for missing children after the Supreme Court ordered that cases of missing children, under the assumption that they have been victims of kidnapping and trafficking, be mandatorily registered by the police.  

Among the many rescued, one minor girl from West Bengal was kidnapped by her acquaintance who brought her and abandoned at Pune railway station. She was found loitering at the railway station and was kept at a shelter home.   

Pune police officials sent her photo and details to the local police station where her parents had lodged a case of her kidnapping. The West Bengal police team accompanied her father here and she was reunited with her family.