A ledger of missing children

Thirteen-year-old Ishayat Shahriar Apratim, the only child of a Cumilla University associate professor, went missing after leaving home on 18 September to take photographs with friends. His body was recovered from woodland near the Lalmai hills about 21 hours later. The tragedy shocked the country, exposing the vulnerability of children even in familiar surroundings and raising grave questions about their safety, particularly amid reports of thousands of children going missing in recent times.

The ledger
Apratim's GD was one of thousands. Between January and July this year, Police Headquarters (PHQ) recorded 15,717 children reported missing. That is about 74 a day, or one every 19 minutes. Of these, 13,679 (87 per cent) were rescued or returned to their families. The other 2,038 (13 per cent) remain untraced, which works out at nearly ten children a day.

The age pattern is plain. Children under ten numbered 474; 406 were found and 68 were not, an untraced share of about 14 percent. Those aged 10 to 17 numbered 15,243, some 97 percent of all reports; 13,273 were found and 1,970 were not, about 13 percent. Teenagers fill most of the register and most of the unresolved cases.

The load is rising. PHQ puts missing-person GDs of all ages at 17,808 in 2023, 16,414 in 2024 and 22,550 in 2025. Police credit part of the increase to online GD filing, which made reporting easier. A GD is also not a verdict: many children counted here came home and were never struck off the record. Some earlier accounts carried a total of 15,917, but 15,717 matches PHQ's own age-wise count and is used here.

A lure, a ransom, a border
Not every case ends in a wood. On 6 October in Gopalganj, a 12-year-old boy was coaxed away from a shop beside his home with an offer of food and forced into a microbus. His father then received calls demanding Tk 10 lakh and threatening the boy's life. Police traced the child by train to Dhaka and on to Satkhira, where, they say, he was being taken into India. He was found near the Bhomra border within three days, and a 30-year-old distant relative was arrested.

On 25 September in Ashuganj, Brahmanbaria, a seven-year-old was raped and strangled at noon in a village of Talshahar union, according to reports. Villagers caught the accused and handed him to police.

What the monthly tallies add
A women's rights group that compiles press reports counted 118 girls among 252 women and girls subjected to violence in August. Ten girls were killed and 36 raped. Eight girls were among 13 victims of gang rape, and 11 were among 14 victims of attempted rape. Such tallies capture only what reaches print, so they mark a minimum, not a total.

Why children vanish
Ransom and the border. The child is the lever and a parent's savings the prize. On 6 October in Gopalganj, a 12-year-old was coaxed from a shop beside his home with an offer of food and forced into a microbus. His father was then given a Tk 10 lakh demand and a death threat. Police traced the boy by train to Dhaka and on to Satkhira, where, they say, he was being taken into India. He was found near the Bhomra border within three days, and a 30-year-old distant relative was arrested.

Theft and resale. A six-year-old taken from Dhaka's Rupnagar was, according to the Special Response Battalion, offered for sale in several places before the abductors gave up and left him in the street. Local police found him on 19 September and placed him in a child rehabilitation centre in Gazipur. The battalion traced him there 18 days after the abduction, and questioning of a woman in custody led it to a child-theft ring. 

Infants are targets too. In September, a five-day-old vanished from the neonatal unit of Chattogram Medical College Hospital and was recovered in Feni early the next morning, and a 23-year-old woman and her mother were arrested. In January, a blind beggar's seven-month-old was snatched outside a restaurant in Sakhipur, Tangail, and recovered in Gazipur within five hours. In June, railway police found three children abducted from Poradaha at Dhaka's Kamalapur station.

The phone as prize and bait. According to the Cumilla University vice-chancellor, the main suspect in Apratim's case had rung him and persuaded him out of the house. The boy carried an iPhone, and a stranger's call was enough to draw him to the gate.

Sexual violence. On 25 September in Ashuganj, Brahmanbaria, a seven-year-old was raped and strangled at noon in Talshahar union, according to reports. Villagers caught the accused and handed him to police.

Running away. Not every report is a crime. An eight-year-old in Madaripur left home in July after a quarrel with his parents, taking Tk 64,120 and a favourite toy. Ansar members found him at the district hospital a day later. In June, three teenage girls left Dhaka's Pallabi after a family discouraged one of them from seeing a friend, and police found them three days later in a rented flat in Mohammadpur. A police official has pointed out that everyone under 18 counts as a child, so the register includes elopement and sulking. Yet a child alone on the road is exposed, whatever the reason for leaving.

Exploitation and feuds. Crime experts and rights groups also list forced begging, the use of children in other crimes, and adult feuds in which a child is used to pressure or falsely implicate a rival. Cases of this kind are thinly documented, which says something about how little of it is recorded.

Crime experts and rights workers cite a familiar list: organised trafficking, kidnapping for ransom, forced begging, family feuds, personal enmity, and the theft of newborns for sale to childless couples. University of Dhaka Professor Dr Tawohidul Haque linked the spread of drugs and the slow pace of justice to an environment in which such networks find room to operate.