Every year, thousands of people, especially those with dementia, amnesia (dysmnésia), or mental-health challenges—go missing across India. Families face fear, uncertainty, and delays, while authorities struggle with limited data, slow coordination, and scattered information sources.
But with today’s AI capabilities and smarter inter-agency collaboration, a faster, more logical, tech-enabled tracking system is not just possible, it’s essential.
This article explains how AI can completely transform missing-person tracing, and how governments and tech companies can jointly build a nationwide network to act within minutes, not days.
1. Centralised Pre-Registration Database: Prevention Before the Crisis
One of the biggest challenges in tracking vulnerable individuals is lack of pre-existing data. Families often wait until the person is already missing to share details.
A Central Government–Local Body Database Can Change This
Imagine a secure, Aadhaar-linked national portal where families can voluntarily upload:
Photos (recent + older)
Physical descriptions
Medical status (dementia, cognitive impairment, risk levels)
Known behavioural patterns
Emergency contacts
Home location and frequently visited areas
This database becomes the first line of defence, allowing AI systems to instantly recognise a missing person from CCTV, police reports, shelters, hospitals, and public transport hubs.
Awareness Drives Are Crucial
Government campaigns—through panchayats, local municipalities, hospitals, and social media—can encourage families to register high-risk individuals proactively.
Early data = faster recovery.
2. Automated Data Mapping Using Hospital & Government Records
Hospitals frequently admit unidentified individuals with memory loss or mental challenges. AI can help by matching hospital case data with the central database.
Automatic Matching Fields Could Include:
Approximate age
Gender
Injuries or medical conditions
Behaviour patterns
Biometrics (if available)
Facial images
This ensures that the moment a high-risk person arrives at a hospital, the system checks for a match—often within seconds.
3. Linking Commercial Shop & Establishment CCTV Feeds
India has millions of CCTV cameras in:
Shops
Malls
Housing complexes
Market areas
Parking lots
Fuel pumps
If commercial establishments opt into a secure, permission-based network, their CCTV feeds can help track movement in real time.
Why This Is Important
AI-powered video analytics can scan:
Gait patterns
Facial features
Clothing
Movement routes
This helps trace the missing person’s path across multiple locations.
4. Open-Source or Licensed Data for Tech & Digital Companies
For faster search operations, governments can license or open-source anonymised datasets (with strict privacy safeguards). Tech companies across regions can:
Fetch nearby CCTV + public footage
Use face-matching and movement prediction algorithms
Issue alerts to other partnered tech companies in the network
Create heatmaps showing possible travel routes
Detect anomalies and identify last-seen coordinates
This creates a distributed, collaborative tracking system, similar to how financial fraud detection networks operate.
5. A Nationwide Tech Network for Real-Time Tracking
Tech companies can form a “Missing Person AI Network” where each company:
Scans its radius using available public footage
Runs detection algorithms on local data
Shares results instantly with the next connected hub
Continues the chain until the missing person is found
This decentralised model ensures:
Faster detection
Wider coverage
Immediate multi-city collaboration
Reduced load on police and government agencies
Conclusion: A Smarter, Faster, More Humane Solution
AI cannot replace human empathy, but it can eliminate the delays, gaps, and blind spots that families suffer during missing-person cases.
A unified system, built with government support, hospital cooperation, CCTV integration, and tech-company collaboration, can dramatically improve recovery rates for individuals with dementia, dysmnésia, and other mental-health vulnerabilities.
The technology exists. The need is urgent. What we require now is centralised policy, open data frameworks, and collective action.
