BANGALORE: Even as the nation is grappling with the enormity of the Noida incident in which scores of children reported missing were found to have been murdered, an equally disturbing trend is being played out in Bangalore city.

According to the city police, on an average 13 persons, most of them children or those below the age of 25, are reported missing every day from Bangalore alone, and the number is put at 400 every month.

More alarming is that of the 7,631 people reported missing from the city since April 2005, only 5,037 have been traced and the whereabouts of 2,500 people are yet to be ascertained.

Where have the 2,500 people, who are yet to be traced, gone? Are they alive or dead?

These questions have been haunting not only the police but also the Karnataka High Court.

The High Court took upon itself the role of a catalyst and sought assistance from the State Public Prosecutor, the State and city police, the Corps of Detectives, (CoD), computer experts, Forensic Science Laboratory and others so that it could help the State and Bangalore city police to come up with a user-friendly and more comprehensive website on missing persons.

When the court initially sought information from the city police, Commissioner of Police N. Achuta Rao submitted that the Central Crime Branch (CCB), which investigated cases relating to missing persons, had just 108 people on its rolls and this had remained the same for several years.

Expressing shock over the number of persons still missing, a Division Bench comprising Justice R. Gururajan and Justice N. Ananda suggested a new method to trace missing persons. The Bench took note of an article that appeared in The Hindu from Mangalore on the possible use of information technology (IT) in tracing missing persons and asked the police to come up with a more effective and comprehensive scheme to trace missing persons.

R. Sri Kumar, Director-General of Police and Chairman and Managing Director of the Karnataka State Police Housing Corporation, had placed several suggestions on the use of IT in tracing missing persons, such as maintaining a web-enabled data bank, setting up exclusive police information network for dissemination of information on missing persons, designing a portal for missing persons and introducing DNA profiling.

Another radical suggestion was creation of an artificial intelligence-based expert system, which could be used by an investigation officer (IO) while dealing with a missing person's case. The system, he said, could help the officer take further steps while investigating such cases and also guide him through the investigation. The court was told that the Forensic Science Laboratory (FSL) would have to be modernised if it had to provide quick results on cases relating to missing persons, particularly narco-analysis test on persons suspected of having been involved in disappearance of the victims. According to the Chief Secretary, the Government had earmarked Rs. 4 crore for improving the facilities at FSL. Several non-governmental organisations have voiced their concern over hundreds of people missing from Bangalore city alone. They said many runaway children or those presumed missing from other districts and even neighbouring States reached Bangalore first. Their first entry into Bangalore was either at the Bangalore City Railway Station or the central bus station. If such children were not fortunate in being spotted and rescued, they invariably fell into the hands of unscrupulous elements and were forced into a life of crime and depravation, they said.

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