New Delhi, Dec. 10 -- The Supreme Court on Tuesday laid the ground for a coordinated pan-India effort to tackle cases of missing children by directing the ministry of home affairs (MHA) to appoint a nodal officer to coordinate with all states and Union territories for consolidating a central repository of data on missing children complaints, recoveries and cases pending prosecution in courts since January 2020. Passing the order in a PIL filed by a non-profit organisation Guria Swayam Sevi Sansthan which flagged the proliferation of inter-state crime syndicates behind the rising number of missing children cases across states, the top court directed the states and UTs to provide updated information for the past five years up to December 31, 2025 and a further six weeks for its collation. The matter will be heard on February 10 for passing orders to strengthen the mechanism to trace out these children. A bench of justices BV Nagarathna and R Mahadevan said, "We direct the MHA to appoint a nodal officer in two weeks. There shall be consultation between the nodal officer of MHA with the nodal officer of each state and union territory for the purpose of collection of accurate statistics of missing children and their restoration to parents or guardians or child care homes." The court further directed the directorate of prosecu- tion in each state/UT to forward details of all missing children cases pending before courts to the MHA's nodal officer. Once the information is made available to the MHA officer, the court granted six weeks for collating all the data and posted the matter for hearing on February 10. As per data, the all-India figure of missing children is 51,100....