How does a city as large as Mumbai manage to trace almost every missing child? Police data reveals a remarkable 99% success rate in 2025, with thousands of children reunited with their families- while special teams continue searching for the few still missing.
Mumbai Police recorded a 99 per cent success rate in tracing missing children
Mumbai: The Mumbai Police recorded a 99 per cent success rate in tracing missing children in the city in 2025, officials said on Saturday. Out of 2,182 reported cases of missing minors last year, authorities managed to locate and safely reunite 2,165 children with their families.
Police officials described the achievement as a result of coordinated efforts by dedicated investigation teams and improved tracking systems aimed at locating missing children quickly.
According to officials, only 17 minors remain untraced from the cases reported in 2025. All of these missing children fall within the 16–18 age group. Special teams have been deployed across different parts of the city to locate the remaining teenagers. Authorities said efforts are ongoing to ensure they are found and safely reunited with their families at the earliest.
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Data from the police also showed that boys accounted for around 55 per cent of missing children cases in 2025, while girls made up the remaining 45 per cent.
To streamline investigations, police have introduced a classification system that divides missing minors into five age categories: 0-5 years, 5-10 years, 10-14 years, 14-16 years, and 16-18 years.
Officials said this categorisation helps investigators adopt more targeted search strategies and better understand patterns behind missing children cases.
In one instance highlighted by officials, a child who repeatedly ran away from home was traced and returned to their family multiple times, with police registering cases each time in accordance with procedure.
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So far in 2026, police have registered 178 cases involving missing minors in the city. Of these, 161 children around 90 per cent have already been traced.
Additionally, seven cases involving children aged up to five years were reported this year, and all of them have been successfully resolved. Currently, three to four specialised teams are working in different areas of the city to track missing minors and ensure their safe return.
Officials also cautioned against misinformation circulating on social media about missing or kidnapped children, stating that some posts have misrepresented official data and created unnecessary panic.
