“Forty-eight hours. It is only after 48 hours that an FIR can be registered for a kid having gone missing,” explains Muhammad Ali, president of Roshni Helpline 1138, a local NGO that operates as a 24/7 child complaint and response centre. “But it is also those 48 hours that are most crucial for a child; if you miss this timeframe, you can lose the child and most often do.”

Mohammed Saqib* lost his three-year-old daughter that way. “The police officer on duty filled out a kutchi report, and told us to go looking for her ourselves. He kept saying come back tomorrow and report your progress to me. An FIR was finally lodged on the fifth day, but we haven’t been able to trace her. We don’t even know if she is alive nor does the police.”

“The loss of contact with parents defines if a child has gone missing,” argues Ali. “As soon as parents lose contact with their children, we must consider that child to be missing, no ifs and buts about it.”

On the other hand, a senior police official, talking on condition of anonymity, argued that procedurally, there is no time bar in cases of children going missing. “In the Pakistan Penal Code (PPC) schedule of offences, kidnapping of a child or an adult is a cognisable offence. Sometimes officers need time to find clarity on the issue; a lost child is not necessarily a kidnapped child,” he says. “Sometimes, FIRs are registered the first day.”

Sindh’s 48-hour time restriction on a missing child being considered “missing” is in fact a betterment of sorts — not too long ago, the struggle of child rights activists was geared around having children going missing recognised as a cognisable offence. The time restriction bound came as an interim order issued by the court of Justice Maqbool Baqar, former chief justice of the Sindh High Court.

“Just before he was elevated to the Supreme Court and had to leave for Islamabad, Justice Baqar issued an interim order in one of our petitions, whereby the police were forced to consider cases of missing children as a cognisable offence after 48 hours. There is no implementation, but in theory at least, the law says 48 hours,” describes Ali.

When an offence is “cognisable,” it allows a police officer to make arrests or start investigations without any court orders. As per the current law, for the first 48 hours of a child going missing, the police cannot act on the assumption of a child actually being missing.

“What is known as a kutchi report is in fact a register of non-cognisable offences. NC reports, as they are known in police parlance, are written in the roznamcha (daily diary) and are registered under section 155 of the Criminal Procedure Code (CrPc),” explains Ali.

Action can only be taken on NC reports if a registered magistrate orders the police to do so, but till then, it is largely a testing wait for the parents. What the police can initiate during the first 48 hours is intimating all stations of a possible case of a missing child, and transmitting data such as personal and appearance details. Whether it happens as stipulated in the law is a different matter.

“When you have a medico-legal examination conducted, you are told that the child has been raped repeatedly. But when it comes to testimony, those accused go scot-free since the law gives the benefit of doubt to the criminal.

“FIRs meanwhile are registered under section 154 of the CrPC, when the offence is officially declared cognisable. It is only after an FIR is registered that an investigation can begin in earnest, when an investigation officer is assigned to a case and he begins his search. In this process of turning a kutchi report into an FIR, we lose 48 very precious hours. This delay is fatal for many,” he argues.

But there is another catch: who will believe a child?

“Once we recover a child, we do ask them what happened and how. But a child is a minor, and as such, his or her statement is not admissible in the eyes of the law. Many sections of our law are imperfect and inadequate,” argues SSP District West Azfar Mehshar, who is trained in matters of juvenile rights and protection.

“When you have a medico-legal examination conducted, you are told that the child has been raped repeatedly. But when it comes to testimony, those accused go scot-free since the law gives the benefit of doubt to the criminal,” says Mehshar.

At the level of the police station, cases are largely handled with the same broad brush that delays the registration of an FIR. In part, the reason for this delay is the victims’ class background: without any power or influence to wield over the police, most victims’ parents are at the mercy of the officer on duty to register a complaint or an FIR.

“Over the past year-and-a-half, a number of children’s bodies have been recovered in the jurisdiction of the Mobina Town Police Station, for example. All instances have been reported in the media,” explains Ali. “Had the FIRs been registered in time, we could have saved at least half these kids. Even after their deaths, we don’t have acknowledgement of the fact that this is an emerging trend, and whoever is behind it needs to be caught.”

For the Roshni Helpline chief, the issue begins at the framing of the problem: “Whether its kidnapping of children, trafficking or any other crime, it all starts at the point when a child goes missing. What happens thereafter are various manifestations of the problem of missing children.”

The implications of this argument are wide-ranging: currently, children’s abductions fall under the larger category of ‘kidnappings’ — cases under this head are to be investigated by the police. But if law enforcement suspects the child to have been trafficked, the case is transferred to the FIA. As such, there is no specialised branch of law enforcement dealing with crimes against children.

“Local police do not want to take jurisdiction of such cases,” explains senior lawyer Omer Sial, who echoes the view that FIRs for missing children’s cases can be registered as kidnapping cases without delay.

“Local police do not want to take jurisdiction of such cases. The shuttle between the police and FIA to determine if the case is of an individual nature or if it is part of a group or a larger arrangement can cause much delay.

“The shuttle between the police and FIA to determine if the case is of an individual nature or if it is part of a group or a larger arrangement can cause much delay. If it’s an individual’s case, the police need to take jurisdiction. When it comes to groups, it becomes the FIA’s jurisdiction,” argues Sial, adding that the FIA can only come to action after the registration of an FIR. “Unless you know someone in law enforcement or have strings to pull, the system works very slowly. It all boils down to the registration of an FIR.”

When an FIR is formally registered, an investigation officer is assigned to the case — at least in theory. But do the police have a budget for comprehensive investigations into missing children’s cases?

In July 2015, Sindh Finance Secretary Sohail Rajput had appeared before the Supreme Court’s Karachi registry in a case pertaining to withholding and redistribution of funds meant for investigation by IGP Ghulam Haider Jamali. The case is being heard by a three-member bench headed by Justice Amir Hani Muslim, with Justice Sarmad Jalal Osmani and Justice Gulzar Ahmed as the other two members.

Rajput had told the court that the police had requisitioned Rs316 million for its investigation wing, but the provincial government had allocated only Rs140 million. Finding discrepancies in the details furnished by the finance secretary, the court had ordered him to re-submit his report with amounts transferred from the finance department to the police.

Simultaneously, the court had ordered the police chief to explain his criteria of distributing funds under the “costs of investigation” head. He was also asked for the number of criminal cases being investigated in different districts of Sindh, excluding Karachi, the amounts disbursed to them, and the date when funds were moved.

But a month later, the court was left dissatisfied with the ambiguous responses furnished by the police and the government. A committee was constituted thereafter, comprising the Sindh chief secretary, advocate-general, IGP and Finance and Home secretaries, to provide a comprehensive review and audit report of investigation funds.

“The irony was that while the Supreme Court registry was in session, an investigation officer in a missing children’s case was asking an aggrieved father for money to meet investigation costs, including travel,” claims Ali. “But it was also this case that was solved at the earliest, since senior police officials had resolved to get results as soon as possible.”

But while an officer or two can take up a case out of interest, is the system working to protect children and recover them in case they went missing?

Senior journalist Hasan Mansoor frames the discussion in terms of camouflaged numbers — by considering missing children as either ‘kidnapped’ or ‘trafficked’, the incidence of missing children gets camouflaged in adult crime statistics.

“Nobody — including the police, welfare and home departments, or even non-governmental organisations — has exact or close-to-actual data about missing children in Sindh. Most NGOs rely on newspaper reports to compile their data, which is only a tiny portion of the actual incidence,” says Mansoor.

“Most parents and relatives do not report their children having gone missing either, and those that do get trapped in the FIR registration process. Because missing children is a non-cognisable offence, no police official or provincial authority takes the matter seriously,” he says.

“Once their child is recovered, parents usually want to move on and not pursue the case any further,” says Ali. “Nobody wants another ordeal at hand, having just escaped one. In fact, parents even disregard our advice of trauma counselling for the child and themselves; they usually bid farewell and only return if they are in trouble again.”

Many tasks described by various stake holders are in fact those of the Sindh government — providing focus on the problem and integrating the response of law enforcement and health professionals.

In May 2011, the provincial assembly had passed the Sindh Child Protection Authority Act, which dictated the formation of a provincial child protection authority within 90 days. Four years later, with two ministers having overseen the matter and left their portfolios, the matter is still in cold storage.

“Whenever we recover children, there is always a stark realisation that we don’t have any place in Sindh where we can provide these kids with food and shelter, even temporary. These children are under immense stress, more than you and I can fathom. But we don’t have an authority which can take charge of the situation and rehabilitate these kids,” says SSP Mehshar.

“We need to change the law, perhaps introduce a special ordinance for the purpose. We need to make well-defined criteria of who is classified as a missing child, a runaway etc. And perhaps, assign focal persons in each district for child protection cells in police stations. These cells can quickly identify the nature of crime committed against a child, and activate the relevant authority,” suggests the SSP.

Published in Dawn, Sunday Magazine, September 20th, 2015

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