Nearly three years over but no trace of Kashish Rawat!

When fragile and innocent Kashish Rawat mysteriously dissappeared 3 years ago from her Sector 22, Noida House while she went at a nearby BHAAGWAT KATHA ceremony, she was just 4 year old. Today she must be seven if God willing she is hale and hearty in any corner of this country or the globe. Kashish hailed from a lower middle class family with his father serving in a private company drawing a meagre salary, who had to even lose his job due to his being involved in unsuccesfully searching his affectionate daughter. Kashish’s mother is still in trauma thinking and praying to Almighty for the well being of her beautiful daughter in whichever part of the world she might be.

The agonising parents have lost every hope except to depend on the miracle of God thinking that one day their most beloved daughter will be with them.

Sounds really shocking and extremely anguishing that two governments and chief ministers have changed in Uttar Pradesh and there had been tremendous assurances to the anguished family from the then UP CM Akhilesh Yadav, her MP wife Dimple Yadav, Raj Babber, RS MP from Uttarakhand, all Lok Sabha MPs of UK, the union home minister Rajnath Singh and the senior most police officers of Noida but all in vain. It seems, there is no rule of law and that the kidnappers or child traffickers ultimately have their say.

Several socio political organisations took out protest marches, several memorandums had already been submitted to the authorities concerned but the situation is to square one as on date.

The complacent police authorities, crime branch and the investigating agencies have no clue of Kashish. Not even knowing whether she is dead or alive. No newspaper or TV channel has been left out who’d not reported the matter in detail but the police and the UP government seems to be negligibly concerned about the plight of the most aggrieved and disenchanted parents of Kashish.

The moot question is, after all where is Kashish. Is she alive or dead ? Why is the Noida police not arriving at any definite conclusion? Are they still on the job to trace her or have closed the file. These questions still remain to be answered.

An organisation SEARCH MY CHILD run by a woman social activist Kusum Kandwal Bhatt has been seriously and deeply involved in searching Kashish and many such children from day one and has left no stone unturned to meet every single SP and SSP including the SHOs of the concerned police station but of no avail.

Noida these days seems to have been on the top in crime and criminal activities with two murders of the Uttarakhandi youths in just a years’ time, one in police custody at Ghaziabad’s Lajpat Nagar area and another, father of two daughters having been killed by goons at sector 36 Noida just a few days ago.

The incident of mysterious disappearence of Kashish Rawat and the failed attempt of Noida police to trace her has compelled everyone to think that reliance on police and the UP law enforcing agencies is just a huge joke as justice could never be expected from them.

Woman activist Kusum Kandwal Bhatt is constantly holding meetings and parleys at every school and nook and corner of Delhi and NCR and trying to mobilise students, youths and people from cross sections of the society to safeguard their children themselves and fight in unison against any such ill conceived design and notion of the criminals, kidnappers and imposters who misled innocent children and girls under the guise of jobs or bright avenues and outrage their dignity and modesty or sell them to child traffickers who involve these children into begging or obnoxious forced trafficking.

In Uttar Pradesh and Delhi NCR several child trafficking gangs seems to be active and the case of Kashish Rawat and many such diappearences are examples enough to prove home this point. If we go by the UNDP statement : because of this wide array of problems it is hard to survey the number of missing children. Often cases are not reported to the police. In 2005 National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) informed that on an average 44000 children are reported missing every year. Of these, as many as 11,000 remain untraced. As on date in India about 1 lakh cases or more of missing children still remain unresolved despite registration of cases years ago.
SUNIL NEGI, PRESIDENT, UTTARAKHAND JOURNALISTS FORUM