Operation Smile led to tracing of 44 missing children in Uttarakhand

Operation Smile: A programme for search and restoration of missing children
Operation Smile, a unique initiative of Ghaziabad Police to track missing children, was in news in second week of July 2015. It came in news after Uttarakhand police under the operation was able to trace at least 44 missing children from various parts of the state within a week.

In another development, the police and the district administration of Dharmapuri, Tamil Nadu has constituted five special teams to spearhead ‘Operation Smile.’

The Operation Smile was launched by the Ghaziabad Police in 2014 with an aim to search and restoration of missing children with their families. Under the operation, the police was able to recover 227 missing children within 30 days of launch.

As part of Operation Smile, Ghaziabad police first sensitized and trained 100 police officers of various ranks about issues related to missing children, POSCO Act, Juvenile Justice Act and Protection of Child Rights Acts and then sent them to various parts of the country including Delhi, Jaipur, Haridwar, Gurgaon, Mumbai and Kolkata to recover missing children in relation to FIRs lodged in Ghaziabad.

Later, after seeing the success of the operation launched by Ghaziabad Police, the Union Home Minister Rajnath Singh in a letter written to all States on 12 December 2014 asked all states to emulate the campaign.

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