Juvenile Crime Surge: Why India's Youth Are Turning To Violence Despite Harsher Laws

Violent crimes by juveniles are on the rise. Delhi alone reports three to four heinous murders committed by juveniles every month. Some of these crimes are extremely troubling. On August 30, four youngsters were apprehended in the well-heeled colony of Malviya Nagar for having stabbed to death another youth and his cousin, who sustained serious injuries. A case of rivalry attenuated by provocative social media posts against each other accelerated a sense of enmity that ended in murder.

Last year, a teenager was booked in the capital for having stabbed another youth 50 times and then dancing over his dead body. This crime was recorded in yet another social media post. A month ago, the city witnessed three back-to-back crimes committed by teenagers. Five minors got drunk and committed two murders and a series of robberies in east Delhi.

Twenty hours later, three youths stabbed a man to death only because he asked them for directions, and a few days later, a man was critically wounded by two youngsters in South Delhi. Another shocker was when three teenagers walked into a nursing home in New Delhi, some months ago, and shot dead a 55-year-old medical practitioner over a petty dispute regarding a medical bill.

Two other recent heinous crimes shocked the nation: one was when a 17-year-old student hammered his best friend to death in the city of Meerut because he was blackmailing his girlfriend with some of her personal photographs, and the second was in July 2025, when two class 12 students killed the principal of their school in Hissar because he asked them to get a haircut.

A 19-year-old playschool teacher in Bhiwani died with her throat being slit on August 11, with the culprits suspected to be teenage boys who continue to be on the run. Another 17-year-old student of class 12 in Gorakhpur pushed his mother so hard that she knocked her head against the wall and died.

The boy (aware of her death) walked out of the house and began living with a neighbour friend and for the next three days lied to his father, a scientist working at the Bhabha Atomic Centre in the south, claiming the mother was not picking up the phone because she must have been busy attending to household chores.

We are witnessing a 50 per cent increase in heinous crimes, which include gang rape and murder by young people, many of whom suffer no sense of remorse. Rather, these youngsters seem to see these killings as a badge of honour and upload pictures of themselves committing these crimes on social media.

Violent behaviour amongst students has become so rampant that cops in the central control room in the capital complain of being overwhelmed by daily phone calls about fights breaking out inside or outside schools, where school students are found beating each other up for petty reasons.

Nor are students afraid, in many examples, of threatening teachers and in some cases assaulting them, as happened in 2024 when a government school teacher was stabbed by a class 12 student who had been ticked off for not wearing his school uniform.

Teachers have also been known to be assaulted with stones and bricks, forcing the Directorate of Education to issue a directive that a student who physically attacks a teacher must be expelled.

But it is violent crimes—murder, attempted murder, and rape—that are increasing exponentially. The NCRB data shows that in 2016, of all the juveniles apprehended, 32.5% were caught for committing violent crimes. By 2022, this figure had shot up to 49.5%.

Madhya Pradesh tops the list of violent crimes by juveniles, followed by Maharashtra. Despite being small in size, Delhi accounts for almost seven per cent of all violent crimes by juveniles. Offences such as rash driving, causing death by negligence, forgery, cheating, trespassing, fraud, pickpocketing, thefts, and obscene acts in public places are not included by our cops in the category of violent crimes, but these too are rising.

It is obvious that the amendment of the JJCPC Act 2015, which allows 16-18-year-olds who commit heinous crimes to be tried as adults and therefore subject to harsher punishment, has not acted as a deterrent. The question before us, as a society, is to ask ourselves, why are our youth going down this path of violence?

Several psychiatrists believe that many of these youngsters are in “need of instant gratification, and if this gratification is denied to them, they cannot deal with this dissonance, and so some of them opt for violent behaviour.”

Others believe that parenting has changed dramatically and, therefore, it is unfair to demonise the child for parental neglect since he has not been provided proper guidance at the most vulnerable stage of his life. Several educationists believe that kids have not been allowed to develop healthy communication skills and thereby give vent to their emotions through violence.

Dr Rajesh Kumar, who heads the Society for Promotion of Youth & Masses and has been running a counselling and a de-addiction centre in Delhi, blames this lack of communication on the extensive use of iPhones whereby they are unable to develop cognitive and emotive skills.

“Parents are living in a virtual world, and so are their children, many of whom grow up having little interaction with parents or family elders. How, then, can they be expected to develop empathy with those around them?” he asks.

The other major problem is that playgrounds are disappearing, and children today have no place to channelise their energies and develop interactive skills with their peers.

Nuclear families are also responsible for increasing tension levels for the youth. Several counsellors believe that with both parents out at work, they are not able to devote enough time for their children, who turn to their peers and friends for emotional support.

Across all strata of society, kids follow what their peers are doing, and if this means the use of drugs, alcohol and then violence, they too will go down that path. Criminals are also known to recruit juveniles to carry out killings or extortion for them because of the latitude in the law.

Dr Vivek Benegal, Prof of Psychiatry at NIMHANS in Bengaluru, believes post Covid, child stress has increased exponentially. This present trend of “helicopter parenting” does not work. Apart from bad parenting, he believes that false messaging over social media amplifies a sense of anxiety in children, and adults need to monitor children’s access to mobile phones.

It reflects poorly on us as a society that our younger generation are taking to delinquent behaviour. More counselling centres need to be opened up, especially in our schools, and it is time parents monitor their children’s behaviour more closely to ensure timely intervention to help correct such behaviour.

Rashme Sehgal is an author and an independent journalist.