BHUBANESWAR: The second edition of Operation Smile-II which concluded on Sunday has brought more 'smile' to the children missing from the State. At least 185 children were rescued by different teams from across 10 States.
Of them, as many as 110 were traced at Andhra Pradesh and Telengana while the rest were rescued from Punjab, Haryana, Delhi, Bihar, Jharkhand, Chhattisgarh, West Bengal, Karnataka and Tamil Nadu.
With this, the total number of rescued children has gone up to 515, Special Director General of Crime Bijay Sharma said at a media conference on Monday. At least 100 children were engaged as child labour. The second leg of Operation Smile-II was meant to cover outside States and ten teams which included policemen and officials from Women and Child Development Department were despatched to track the kids down by liaisoning with the respective State authorities.
"The operation has been a resounding success since during last year's campaign, we had traced 87 missing children from other States," Sharma said.
At least, 12 children were rescued from Chhattisgarh, eight from Delhi, seven from Maharashtra, 27 from West Bengal and 12 from Tamil Nadu.
Most of the rescued children were traced in childcare institutions and were unwilling to go back home. Only after counselling that they relented.