"There are some studies conducted by both government and non-government organisations, which bear testimony to the fact that a large number of girls and boys, who run away from their homes or are said to have run away from their homes, are mainly school dropouts or children, who get fed up with domestic conditions," the NHRC committee said in its report.

The glamour and lure of big cities make many of these children blind to the stark realities of urban life, the committee observed.

A committee headed by NHRC member P C Sharma was set up last year to examine the problems of missing children in the country.

The Committee has stated that a previous study by the NHRC on ‘trafficking’ has shown that an average of 44,000 children are reported missing and of them as many as 11,000 remain untraced in any given year.

The finding said that children being vulnerable fall prey to false promises of careers in films or modelling and eventually end up as sex workers, domestic help and labourers doing hazardous works.

Many of the run-away boys and girls also become victims of organised begging rackets, pick-pocketing and drug peddling among others, the committee stated.

Missing Children are also trafficked and further abused, physically or sexually, and their cases are not even brought to the notice of police for various reasons, the NHRC Committee noted.

Many of the missing children come from indigent families, who either do not have access to authorities or whose complaints are not treated with due diligence, it observed.