Juvenile participation in crime on rise, say police

NEW DELHI: The appeal of establishing one's own "following", a way to make a quick buck and "inspiration" from reel and real-life gangsters have led to a splurge in the number of heinous crimes being committed by minors over the recent past, police officers aware of the matter said.

- Jignasa Sinha and Hemani Bhandari

In many such cases, when caught, juveniles are sent to correctional homes, where they are counselled and involved in reform activities. According to child counsellors, most of these juveniles are inspired by gangsters, and come from underprivileged families without adequate access to education.

IPS officer Joy N Tirkey, a former deputy commissioner of police, who studied minors in northeast Delhi, said, "From interrogation of these minors so far, we found that they come from broken families with no one looking at their conduct due to which they fall into bad company and start committing crime for easy money or to feel powerful."

The mother of a 17-year-old resident, who grew up seeing his father assault and abuse his wife, in Seelampur recalled how the boy was "innocent and didn't ever even talk back to anyone" when he was a kid.

"But when he turned around 11 or 12, he started spending a lot of time away from home. When he was 16, the boy had allegedly stabbed a 22-year-old man to death in Seelampur over a petty argument," she said.

"This is how it is. I had to feed my children so I had to go out and work. If I stayed home watching over him, we would die of hunger. But I didn't...And this is what happened...The first-ever time police came to take him, I was shocked. Till then, I hadn't realised that his bad company would also indulge him in crime," she said.

However, this is hardly an isolated case as evidenced by the series of crimes involving minor perpetrators.