Shimla (Himachal Pradesh) [India], May 22 : Missing reports for a total of 153 individuals were reported in Shimla district in Himachal Pradesh so far in 2023.
17 among them were minors - four boys and 13 girls. Out of those missing minors, 16 have been traced, Shimla Superintendent of Police Sanjeev Kumar Gandhi said.
"In the matters of minors, our average rescue time is within 48 hours. This response time is attained only due to the application of technical assistance support," said the SP.
"As missing children and teenagers are quite vulnerable to crime, so we use technical assistance to rescue such lost children. Social media profiles are very helpful in tracing and rescue of minor missing lost teenagers. As these days minor boys and girls are quite tech- savvy they use Facebook, Instagram, and many other social media networks very frequently," the district police head said.
He added that technical support such as Call Details Registry, dump data analysis, social media history searches by the lost children, and decoding IP addresses are proving very helpful in tracing and rescuing lost children.
In one of the instances, according to the SP, an 8th standard boy who used to surf using his parents' mobile escaped from home and police managed to trace him purely on the clues received by the analysis of searching history.
Similarly, three girls of age between 11 to 14 escaped from their home with money and jewellery and were traced only by cyber technical assistance as one of them used took along her mother's mobile and drop messages to one of her social media friends. She was traced on the analysis of the Instagram profiles she used.
The police also listed some potential reasons why people are missing or leaving their homes. Social media attractions, broken family milieu, drug addiction, study stress or failures in examinations are among them.
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