Pune: As many as 27 families from different parts of the country were reunited with their missing kids under Operation Muskan of the Pune city police in July. Most of the children are from Maharashtra, Uttar Pradesh, Karnataka and West Bengal.

Police officials said that most children had left home due to poverty or dispute with family members. The children were either found begging or at railway stations. After being rescued by NGOs, they were housed at observations homes.

Senior Police Inspector Sanjay Patil, in-charge of social security cell, said, “We visited various shelter homes and found out where children hail from. After verifying with the local police stations, their parents were called and reunited with their children.”

The operation was part of a statewide hunt for missing children, after the Supreme Court ordered that cases of missing children, under assumption that they have been victims of kidnapping and trafficking, be mandatorily registered by the police.

Among the many rescued one minor girl from West Bengal was kidnapped by her acquaintance who brought here here and abandoned her at the Pune railway station. She was found loitering at the railway station and kept at a shelter home. Pune police officials sent her photo and details to the local police station where her parents had lodged a case of her kidnapping. The West Bengal police team accompanied her father here and she was reunited with her family.