Five lives in the last month. That is the price Keralam has paid for the recklessness of some entitled and scheming teenagers who seem to believe they can break the rules and get away with it. The state has been witnessing a worrying rise in juvenile crime and violent incidents involving minors. While some were committed under the influence of alcohol and drugs, others were acts of calculated plotting and revenge.
The latest in the series is the murder of a 16-year-old boy in Thiruvananthapuram by a gang involving a juvenile and a teenage girl. Barely a week earlier, a 17-year-old boy, son of an additional district and sessions judge, drove his father’s car and knocked down a scooter, killing a 55-yearold roadside vendor. Two weeks before that, a drunken teenager claimed three lives when his luxury car rammed into a scooter. In another gruesome incident, four juveniles, including a 13-year-old girl, were held for the premeditated murder of her grandfather. Murders, underage and drunken driving, Pocso cases, drug trafficking and goonda cases involving teenagers have all been on the rise.
This is not a Keralam-specific phenomenon. The latest NCRB data show that the country recorded 34,878 cases of juvenile crime in 2024, an 11 percent increase over the previous year. India’s juvenile justice system has traditionally been welfare-oriented, emphasising reform and rehabilitation over punishment. But, according to the police, many teenage offenders are well aware of the leniency the law affords them and exploit its loopholes to escape accountability.
Nobody is born a criminal, and the reasons behind rising juvenile crime are undoubtedly rooted in a complex mix of personal and societal influences. These must be understood and addressed. But minors who commit heinous crimes such as murder and rape cannot be allowed to take advantage of a system designed to protect and reform them. Much has changed since the law was framed a decade ago. Children today are exposed to far more than was anticipated when the Juvenile Justice Act was enacted. While it is important to understand what drives teenagers into crime and address those factors, it is equally important to amend the law to reflect changing times. Reform cannot come at the cost of accountability. As Keralam’s home minister rightly said, we urgently need to revisit our legal frameworks.
