The Delhi High Court bench of Justices S Muralidhar and I S Mehta on Thursday (February 1) pulled up Delhi government for unable to evolve a proper mechanism to track missing children in the Union Territory.

The Delhi government also received flak for the delay in developing software to trace missing children and also on the software’s inefficiency after it was informed that software is unable to identify the children after two to three years.

The court said that the software would be “useless” and it should be installed only after examining if the software is working ideally. Rahul Mehra, the counsel appearing for Delhi government, informed the court that the police will need two-three months to install the ‘vision box’.

In the last hearing, the court had observed that the CCTVs installed at railway stations have to be more advanced. The court, while highlighting the need for face recognition software in rescuing missing children, had also observed that there are Rs 3,000 crores in the Nirbhaya fund which were not being utilized for anything. The court had directed to utilize the fund for rescuing missing children and to deal with girl child abuse.

The matter has been listed for April 5.

—India Legal Bureau