Mumbai, June 2: At least 23 child labourers who were rescued yesterday have run away from a remand home in Mankhurd in suburban Mumbai, police said.

Senior police inspector Raja Tambad said the children brought to the state-run remand home were found missing when a headcount was being taken this afternoon.

In a massive crackdown on industrial units in the congested Madanpura locality in central Mumbai, the police had rescued 465 children working in exploitative conditions.

Offences were registered today under the Juvenile Justice Act against the owners of 20 units that employed child labourers.

Over 100 such employers are likely to be prosecuted for forcibly making children, many of them minors, work in zari-weaving and bag-packing units and other industries.

After the raids, the police had let off 19 children yesterday evening. Today, some of the older children ? aged between 14 and 16 ? were released, while the rest were left in the Mankhurd home.

Members of the NGOs that helped in the raids continued to collect information about the children, most of whom hail from Bengal, Uttar Pradesh, Bihar and Andhra Pradesh.

“The data about the children is still being formulated. We saw children from Nepal and Bangladesh, too,” said Leela Padate who works for Bal Prafulta, a child welfare organisation.

“We are still in the process of finding detailed information about the children, which would help the repatriation process and in designing a comprehensive long-term rehabilitation plan for these children,” said Lalita Katre, the co-ordinator of CCVC, another NGO.