Young minds are ruling city’s crime scene. Recent figures released by the National Crime Records Bureau show that while youth aged between 18-30 years were behind 57 per cent of all crimes in Delhi, 12 per cent of criminals caught in the capital were educated. And 85 to 93 per cent of these were first timers, who were younger than 25.

With the increase in the number of minors turning perpetrators of crime, the city is slowly becoming a hub of young gangster groups, that are getting younger by the day. This alarming trend has left the city wondering why children are resorting to such grave methods.
Says Rishab Mathur, a software engineer, “The issue is not only the scarcity of means to make money, but also the high standard of living that one needs to maintain to flaunt it. And when you expect more than what you deserve, the element of desire overpowers sanity and criminal minds are born. Today’s teenagers suffer from a ‘sense of urgency syndrome’ which means trying to get hold of something you desire quickly and easily. And when they don’t get it, whether it’s plausible or not, it frustrates them. They’re also unable to take failure in positive manner.”
In the past few months, there have been a number of incidents where minors have been involved in heinous crimes like murder and rape. While a 16-year-old boy was murdered by a group of minor boys following a fight recently, last week, a child slashed his teacher’s face over a trivial issue. Few months back, an MBA student was a part of the gang of professional armed robbers and so were a handful of Delhi college students, who were nabbed for running a betting rackets during the World Cup.
Delhi-based Prajak Chakraborty explains, “Quintessentially, the capital city has been renowned for its raucous ways. Aggression in a language, the ‘need’ to keep the machismo going and be a ‘Delhiite’ could gradually have gotten the better of the youth. Rampant rape attempts, fights and the want to rebel, all put together could lead to crimes — when any of these outbursts reach an extreme. Till the time the deed is done, aggression is perceived as cool, or to an extent a part of the ‘I have arrived in life’ attitude.”
He adds, “It has been seen that guardians here don’t admonish their kids (especially boys) when the little ones indulge in pesky acts. Such indulgences lead to their wards growing up as rough, abusive, alcoholic and crime-laden.”
Psychologists feel that juvenile crimes have increased manifold in the past few years, which has triggered not only teenage crime, but pre-teen crime as well. Dr Vishal Chhabra, psychiatrist, Vimhans, says, “The most glaring reason for an increase in juvenile crimes is the ‘sudden altered behavioural pattern’. The stress that children have to deal with is the repercussion of changing lifestyle and increase in materialism. This has made them more aggressive.”
Chhabra added that it is the sense of “I do what I want to do” in children that has led them to exhibiting such behaviour. “Peer pressure has become an overriding consideration for children and they are not scared of getting involved in criminal activities. Bullying has also increased in schools,” he concludes, adding that it is important for families to check such behavioural patterns and also strengthen the family system that inculcates a positive approach to life.