MHA’s Operation Muskaan: Over 5,000 minors rescued by Mumbai Police

Over 5,000 missing minors have been rescued by Mumbai Police this year as part of Operation Muskaan. Operation Muskaan is a Ministry of Home Affairs project which aims at finding missing children, and rescuing and rehabilitating them.

All about Operation Muskaan

Operation Smile, also called Operation MUSKAAN is an initiative of the Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) to rescue/rehabilitate missing children. It is a dedicated campaign for a month where several activities are taken up by the State Police personnel to trace and rescue the missing children and reunite them with their families.

How has Operation Smile started?

Government's initiative is based on a successful operation titled "Operation Smile" taken up by the Ghaziabad Police, Uttar Pradesh during September 2014. As part of the operation, 227 missing children of Ghaziabad were rescued from different parts of the country in just one month.

Activities taken up as part of Operation Smile

• All children residing in shelter homes, platforms, bus stands, roads, religious places, etc. are to be screened by trained police personnel.
• Before the operation, the Police personnel from each State are properly trained in methodology to extract information from such children tactfully without they getting intimidated, as well as in various provisions of Protection of Children from Sexual Offences (POCSO) Act, Juvenile Justice (Care and Protection of Children) JJ Act, Protection of Child Right Act, relevant sections of Cr.PC & IPC and Advisories issued by MHA etc.
• To know the magnitude of the problem, data with full details of the number of cases of missing children will be maintained and shared at intra-State and Inter-state level. Information about Child Welfare Committees (CWCs) would be prepared and shared among all rescue teams and stakeholders.
• During the operation, the particulars of such identified children will be uploaded on the 'Missing child' portal of the Ministry of Women and Child Development by the respective State Police.
• Rehabilitation measures whenever needed are to be taken up in coordination with the other line Departments like Department of Women & Child Development, Police, Labour, etc so that scope of re-victimization is eliminated.
• Public awareness to be increased by way of national campaigns, advertisements on national media, etc.