New Delhi, April 17 (IANS) A Delhi court has awarded 10 years rigorous imprisonment to two habitual child kidnappers, including a woman.

 
 The court also said that punishment for child abduction should be enhanced to meet the challenge of growing number of kidnappings.
 
 Ritu Kapoor, 41, and Mohammed Jiyaul, 26, were sentenced to rigorous imprisonment for 10 years and fined Rs.5,000 for "kidnapping in order to murder".
 
 Additional Session Judge Kamini Lau also sentenced them to another seven years and fined them an additional Rs.2,000.
 
 "Both sentences shall run concurrently," the judge said April 13.
 
 The public prosecutor said the convicts were habitual child lifters and were involved in five other cases of similar nature.
 
 Two of the abducted children had been recovered from Kapoor's residence in north Delhi after her arrest.
 
 Kapoor kidnapped a month-and-half-old boy of Anita from her house at Mukherjee Nagar Nov 13, 2008 with Jiyaul's help. Kapoor had pretended to be a government representative.
 
 The court said: "The convicts being habitual child lifters, any leniency shown is likely to be misplaced under the given circumstances when the child itself is not traceable.
 
 "Kidnapping has become a major problem in our society. It is a profitable business, if the victim is an infant belonging to a poor family.
 
 "Physical appearance of the child aged a few months frequently changes, making it difficult for even family members to identify after a long time.
 
 "The situation becomes all the more difficult when the victim belongs to a poor family and the child's family is unable to provide any identification proof in the form of photograph etc," the court observed.
 
 The judge said: "Delhi has one of the highest numbers of missing children, and the country has no central data on the number of children who go missing or what has happened to them.
 
 "As many as 60,000 young children below the age of 18 were reported missing in 2009 across India compared to 44,000 in 2004. And 40 percent of them were traced through the individual efforts by parents.”
 
 According to Alliance for Peoples' Rights, at least seven children, mostly from extremely poor families, go missing every hour. This amounts to 165 a day.
 
 About 10 percent or 6,000 children who go missing are infants -- less than a year old.