A 14-year-old boy was arrested in Bagalkot, Karnataka for raping a 12-year-old girl. Three other boys, all of them class 9 students who filmed the crime, have also been arrested.

In southwest Delhi, a 17-year-old boy was stabbed to death. His 15-year-old friend was injured, by four other boys in daylight, the crime captured on CCTV.

There’s the 20-year-old who learned that his parents were disinheriting him in favour of his elder sister, and so he killed all three of them.

If the headlines of the past month—and this is just a tiny sample—don’t convince you of the crisis amongst India's young men and boys, then look at data: 37,780 juveniles were arrested for various crimes in 2022. Of these, 7,844 were for cognisable (serious) offences. The juvenile crime rate rose from 0.9% in 2000 to 6.9% in 2022, notes an article by Pushkarni Panchamukhi, an associate professor at the Bengaluru’s School of Economics and Prahlad Nimalan, a law student at NALSAR.

Indian law defines a juvenile as someone who is younger than 18 years in age. In the wake of public outrage following the gang-rape and subsequent death of a physiotherapy student in Delhi in 2012, one of the perpetrators turned out to be 17-years-old. The law was subsequently tweaked: those aged between 16 and 18 found guilty of particularly horrific crimes would be tried as adults.

That’s not been enough to deter rising crime among young boys and men.........

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