Hyderabad Boy Missing For 10 Years Found In UP’s Kanpur

A 12-year-old boy who went missing from his residence in Hyderabad in 2014 has been traced in Uttar Pradesh by a special team from the Women Safety Wing of Telangana Police, a senior official said on Wednesday.

The boy, missing since August 18, 2014, was located in Kanpur, Uttar Pradesh, after 10 years and reunited with his family in Hyderabad, according to Shikha Goel, Director General of the Women Safety Wing.

Investigations revealed that the boy left home carrying only his Aadhaar card. Despite initial efforts by the local police, he could not be traced. The case was later handed over to the Anti-Human Trafficking Unit, CID, Telangana Police.

The Women Safety Wing’s technical team utilised open-source tools and police investigation resources to gather all available digital identities linked to the missing boy, Ms Goel said.

The investigation revealed that the boy’s digital identity had been altered using his Aadhaar card, which was updated with a new mobile number, she stated.

Following this lead, the team traced the mobile number to a retired government employee in Uttar Pradesh.

Further inquiries uncovered that the boy had travelled to Uttar Pradesh by train at the age of 12. While at Kanpur railway station, he was taken into custody by the Railway Police and placed in a Child Care Institution, where he remained until 2022, police officials said.

The boy was subsequently adopted, and his name was changed. Acting on this information, the special investigation team travelled to Kanpur and successfully located him, the police said.

In a similar effort, the team resolved two other long-pending missing cases. Among them was an 11-year-old girl who had been missing since October 30, 2015. She was found after nine years in Nizamabad, Telangana, officials added.

In another case, a 10-year-old girl and an 8-year-old boy, missing since July 5, 2017, were traced in Bengaluru. Both have since been reunited with their families, the police said.

Between January and November 2024, Telangana reported 22,780 missing cases, of which 19,191 were successfully traced. “Our tracing success rate stands at 84.25 per cent, significantly higher than the national average of 51.1 per cent,” Goel stated.

Ms Goel praised the efforts of the officers from the Anti-Human Trafficking Unit and ‘SHE Cyber Lab’ in the Women Safety Wing for their work on long-pending missing cases and their continued efforts to trace the missing individuals, an official release said.