The Delhi High Court has directed police to form a Special Investigation Team in order to trace and produce a 12-year-old girl who has been missing for months and whose parents suspect that she is either being held in illegal custody or has been trafficked to someone in India or overseas.
A division bench of Justices Siddharth Mridul and Mini Pushkarna was hearing a habeas corpus petition filed by the girl’s parents, who used to live in Nepal.
The parents, in their plea, said that they formerly resided in Nepal in a woman’s home where her sister-in-law routinely came on visits, and had agreed to sent their daughter to Delhi with her to receive good education and upbringing.
The court said that the child be produced quickly before the court.
It also gave the Delhi Police’s Anti Human Trafficking Unit (Crime Branch) control over the case’s investigation.
“We consider it appropriate to transfer the investigation regarding the disappearance of the 12-year-old daughter of the petitioner, to the Anti-Human Trafficking Unit (Crime Branch), to be supervised by the DCP concerned.
“The DCP concerned is directed to set up an SIT to locate, recover and produce the missing child before this court expeditiously,” the court said, listing the matter for the next hearing on April 4.
The plea says that the girl went missing from her caretaker’s home in Shaheen Bagh here last August.
It said that the girl had been accused of theft in a complaint made to Delhi Police by the sister-in-law’s husband.
When her parents tried to contact him, he said that they would have their daughter in four to five years.
“The petitioners are living under great fear of the life of their daughter who is missing. The petitioners are under the belief that their daughter has been trafficked to someone in India or abroad by respondent 2 and 3 (sister-in-law and her husband) or is in their illegal custody.
“The investigation may also be monitored by this court to see whether it is an isolated incident or a racket is working in Delhi,” the petition said.