Missing Children, Missing Accountability: Why Maharashtra’s Home Minister Must Answer
Mumbai’s recent spate of missing children cases has once again jolted public conscience. But the shock wears off quickly in Maharashtra, because this is not new. It is part of a disturbing pattern that has persisted year after year. Children have been going missing across the state in worrying numbers since 2021–22, and yet the political response has remained unchanged: acknowledge briefly, cite recovery percentages, and move on. This op-ed is written because that response is no longer acceptable. When a crisis becomes routine, accountability becomes urgent.
The numbers themselves should have triggered a reckoning long ago. Thousands of children have gone missing across Maharashtra over the last few years. Even when viewed conservatively, these are not marginal figures or statistical blips. They represent repeated failures across policing, prevention, surveillance, inter-state coordination, and child protection mechanisms. A state that prides itself on administrative competence cannot brush aside such sustained lapses as inevitabilities of urban life.
The government’s favourite defence has been the claim of “high recovery rates”. This argument is deeply flawed. Recovery after disappearance is not success; it is damage control. It does not erase the trauma suffered by the child, the fear endured by families, or the exposure to exploitation, abuse, or trafficking risks during the period of disappearance. A system that allows children to vanish first and congratulates itself later for tracing them has already failed at its primary duty: prevention.
More importantly, recovery percentages hide uncomfortable truths. They do not reflect how long children remain missing. They do not account for those never found. They do not explain why the same socio-economic groups remain disproportionately affected year after year. And they certainly do not justify political complacency. In no other sector of governance would such reasoning be tolerated. A bridge that collapses but is quickly repaired is still a failure. Child safety should not be held to a lower standard.
The responsibility for this failure rests squarely with the Home Ministry. Policing, crime prevention, missing persons coordination, trafficking detection, and inter-agency response all fall within its remit. Since 2022, this department has been overseen by Devendra Fadnavis. With authority comes accountability. Yet despite recurring warning signs, there has been no resignation, no public apology, no independent audit, and no serious legislative debate on why these failures persist.
In many functioning democracies, ministers have stepped down for far less. A data breach, a policing lapse, or a single high-profile failure has often been enough to trigger resignations or parliamentary scrutiny. In Maharashtra, thousands of missing children have not even provoked sustained questioning. This silence reflects a troubling political culture where outcomes are secondary to optics and accountability is treated as optional.
Behind every statistic is a family left in limbo. Most affected families are poor, migrant, or socially vulnerable. For them, the disappearance of a child is not just a tragedy but a collapse of faith in the state. When governments normalise such outcomes, they effectively tell citizens that some lives are more expendable than others.
Accountability does not mean political theatrics. It means a clear public explanation of failures, an independent review of policing and child protection mechanisms, transparent year-wise data disclosure, time-bound corrective reforms, and parliamentary oversight. It means acknowledging that existing measures are insufficient and committing to systemic change rather than public relations exercises.
The question that now confronts Maharashtra’s leadership is simple and unavoidable. If thousands of missing children do not merit accountability at the highest level, what does? A government is ultimately judged not by press statements or recovery percentages, but by its ability to protect the most vulnerable. On that test, silence is no longer an option.
