Jharkhand Police Crack Inter-State Child Trafficking Network, 12 Kids Recovered
In a major operation against organised child abduction and trafficking, Jharkhand Police have dismantled an active inter-state racket and brought 12 missing children back to safety, officials announced on Sunday.
Acting on intelligence, a Special Investigation Team (SIT) traced and rescued the young victims—10 girls and two boys aged between 4 and 12—who were taken from several districts across the state.
The recovered children were reportedly abducted from Ranchi, Bokaro, Dhanbad, Chaibasa, and Latehar, authorities said.
Senior Superintendent of Police (SSP) Rakesh Ranjan confirmed that 13 suspects linked to the gang have been arrested in multiple states, including Bihar, West Bengal, Odisha, Jharkhand, and Uttar Pradesh.
Interrogations of further suspects are ongoing.
Police have shifted the rescued children to the Dhurwa police station and are arranging DNA tests to help reunite them with their families.
Local investigators believe the gang, which they’ve dubbed the “Gulgulia Gang,” has been operational for about a decade, preying on vulnerable families and trafficking children across state borders.
SSP Ranjan noted that traffickers often target kids from economically disadvantaged backgrounds, taking advantage of their parents’ lack of legal awareness and limited access to formal channels for reporting missing children.
The breakthrough follows the earlier recovery of two siblings, reported missing from Ramgarh district on January 2 and found on January 14, in what officers described as a separate but related strand of the same broader trafficking problem.
Child Trafficking Still a Large Racket
Child trafficking remains a significant and complex challenge in India. According to estimates, approximately 96,000 children go missing nationwide each year, many of whom are believed to fall into trafficking or exploitation before authorities can trace them.
Official crime data also shows that over 47,000 children were reported missing in recent years, with roughly 71% of them being girls—often at heightened risk of exploitation.
Between 2020 and 2025, roughly 3 lakh children were reported missing across India, with about 36,000 still untraced, highlighting persistent gaps in recovery and enforcement.
Traffickers use varied tactics, including deception, coercion, and false promises of education or employment, to lure children away from families.
Despite legal frameworks and dedicated helplines like Childline (1098) working nationwide, experts say the scale of unreported cases and organised networks continues to challenge law enforcement and child protection systems.
The Jharkhand operation underscores both the severity of child trafficking and the importance of coordinated police action, community vigilance, and systematic tracing to safeguard vulnerable children.
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