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HYDERABAD: An advocate, whose letter played a key role in ridding Yadadri of its infamous child trafficking and prostitution tag, has now set his eyes on tracing the missing children in Telangana. He stated that had police not closed missing cases and carried out proper investigation, Hajipur killings could have been averted.

Advocate Rapolu Bhaskar, whose letter on the woes of children caught in the clutches of trafficking mafia moved the high court, has now filed a public interest litigation (PIL) on the missing children. The high court had converted his letter into a PIL and ordered crackdown and freed Yadadri from the menace.

In his latest PIL, the advocate mentioned about the cases of missing children in Telangana. “Between 2015 and 2018, 2,000 children—1,350 girls and 650 boys — went missing. What is alarming is the fact that police are closing these cases without tracing the children,” he stated in his petition.

“Children are being kidnapped by mafia elements and are trafficked. Girls are being forced into prostitution,” he said. “The menace is more prevalent in Adilabad district, where the kidnapped children are being trafficked out to other states. Telangana has the dubious distinction of being at eighth place in the country in trafficking girls,” he said.

Most missing children belong to socially and economically weak sections. Police were not filing charge sheets in all the cases of missing children, he alleged.

Bhaskar urged the court to direct the director-general of police (DGP) and home secretary to reopen all the closed cases pertaining to missing children. “This would unearth the real criminals playing with the lives of children in particular and people in general,” he said.

He cited the Hazipur killings as an example where the rape and murder of three minor girls came to the fore long after the police closed these cases. “Had police investigated the cases properly, then the crimes would have been averted,” he said.

