Within just 4 days of using a new facial recognition system, New Delhi police have been able to identify nearly 3,000 missing children.

IFLScience

Currently, the names of the children are being determined so they can be reunited with their families.

According to the Indian government, New Delhi police began using the software on April6, testing 45,000 kids living in various children’s homes throughout the city.

LADBible

After cross-referencing the results with a massive database of missing children, they were able to recognise 2,930 of the reported cases within April 6 and April 10.

Despite the success of the operation, the facial recognition system is still very much on a trial basis as of now. But the The Ministry of Women and Child Development (MWCD), along with the Delhi Police, are pushing forward with rolling out the system to the rest of India.

A spokesperson for Bachpan Bachao Andolan (BBA), the children’s rights organisation that was behind the campaign, said:

“India currently has almost 200,000 missing children and about 90,000 lodged in various child care institutions.”

YouTech

“It is almost impossible for anyone to manually go through photographs to match the children,” he added.

In a 1.3 billion-person population such as India, such a task as tracing the whereabouts of thousands of children who disappear each year becomes gargantuan in proportion.

IFLScience

India’s Ministry of Women and Child Development report that there were more than 240,000 cases of missing children between 2012 and 2017 alone. However, some organizations estimate that the real number is almost to 500,000 per year.

With the digital tool, Indian officials hope that the backlog of names and photos will be significantly reduced.

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