250,000 children were registered as missing on the Indian government's Track Child portal between January 2012 to March 2017 - that's five children vanishing every hour. The Track Child data also shows nearly 73,000 children - 30 percent - are still missing despite a raft of initiatives to better protect and find these children.
Campaigners urge that these figures are just the tip of the iceberg, as many cases are not registered by parents or the police, and the children dismissed as runaways.
Most, however, are sold into slavery in a country where poverty prevails and child labour is normalised, despite being banned. Activists estimate that up to 70 percent of found missing children had been trafficked and enslaved.
India's Ministry of Home Affairs' data reveals that the number of untraced children in the country has increased by 84 percent between 2013 and 2015. The total number of untraced children in 2015 was 62,988, compared to 34,244 in the year 2013, according to The Huffington Post. The National Crime Records Bureau data also show related crimes such as trafficking and buying and selling of minors for the purpose of prostitution are rising.
A lack of training of police, child welfare and protection officials, poor coordination between agencies in different states, coupled with massive public apathy is hampering the battle to locate India's "lost generation".
India has one of largest populations of children in the world, with more than 40 percent of its 1.2 billion people below the age of 18, according to its 2011 Census.
An economic boom of the last two decades has lifted millions out of poverty yet many children continue to be born into dire circumstances with India home to over 30 percent of the world's 385 million most impoverished children, according to a 2016 World Bank and UNICEF report.
They make easy prey for traffickers, fed promises of a job and a better life but often ending up in forced labour.
A lack of training of police, child welfare and protection officials, poor coordination between agencies in different states, coupled with massive public apathy is hampering the battle to locate India's "lost generation", say campaigners.
Missing children are so common in India that notices printed in classified sections of India's daily newspapers are buried alongside tender notices and job vacancies, with blurred black and white photos alongside a description and a contact number. Each notice ends with a comment making the same remark: "Sincere efforts have been made by local police to trace out this missing girl/boy, but no clue has come to light so far."
Some missing children are in public view despite being enslaved. A representative of Duars Expressmail, an anti-trafficking charity based in Jalpaiguri in northeastern India, Raju Nepali said: "No one - not the police or the public - even try to inquire about these children. They have become part of normality, maybe because they are poor. So we don't question who they are, why they are there and who they are with."
While some children manage to escape or are rescued in police raids after tip-offs from activists or local residents, others are not so fortunate, trapped for years.
Child Line, a 24-hour toll-free helpline, has been running nationally for over a decade. Over nine million calls were received in 2015/16 with over 25,000 about missing children. Two official web portals have been set up to register missing children, while Track Child allows police, government and charities to better coordinate.
The country is also drafting its first comprehensive anti-human trafficking legislation, providing for a special investigative agency to coordinate between states.
"There has definitely been a major push by police to find missing children in the last few years," said a police official from Delhi's crime branch, however there is still a definite need to escalate public awareness on this harrowing matter.