Ever since her son vanished two years ago at the age of eight, Jamela Atullah has kept a photograph of the boy under the torn, rolled-up cotton sari that serves as a pillow in the shack she calls home. She lives in Bawana, an ugly, dusty, industrial township on the outskirts of New Delhi.
Little Tohidallum wandered away from their home - a makeshift covering of plastic sheeting held up by bamboo sticks and topped with corrugated plastic, in the J.J. Colony slum - on April 16, 2007, to play with friends. 'When he didn't return by seven, I began to search for him,' Mrs Atullah, 48, said. 'My neighbours looked around the entire area, but there was no trace of him. I have looked everywhere for him, I have gone all over Delhi, but I haven't found my son.'
She was feeling particularly disconsolate as she spoke, having just visited yet another home for destitute children at the other end of the city after hearing a 'rumour' that a boy resembling her son was there. 'But it wasn't him,' she said, kissing his photo as her daughters, Ruksana and Rizvana, tried to comfort her. 'I've only got this photograph to kiss. But I won't give up hope. No mother or father ever gives up hope about their child.'
Tohidallum is just one of the 16 children reported missing in New Delhi every day according to a report by two volunteer groups, the Youth India Society (NBS) and Bigul Workers' Group (BMD), which has surveyed poor families and checked police records. Their research revealed that almost 8,000 children went missing between January 2007 and June last year. The victims were aged between two and 15.
NBS co-ordinator Tapish Maindola said that while some of the children might have run away because of family quarrels, he believed the vast majority had been kidnapped by organised gangs and sold to middlemen. And the real figure of missing children was probably much higher.
'The children end up working as domestic servants or in tea shops and factories. Or they are forced into prostitution or used for internet pornography,' said Mr Maindola. 'The police usually don't even bother filing a missing person's complaint because the parents are poor and helpless.'