Bhopal: Increasing incidents of crime involving juveniles in the city, which is in news for all wrong reasons in recent past, has added to the concern of authorities and particularly of the people working in the field of children welfare. A data provided by child line of the district police is an indicator of increasing criminality among juveniles.
Their statistics throw light on involvement of minors in sex offence and crimes as heinous as rape and murder. In last eleven months, as many as 28 rape cases and 39 cases of harassments involving minors have come to fore. Shockingly, around 506 cases involving minors were registered between April 2017 and February 2018.
In the two incidents reported in Gautam Nagar and Sukhisewania areas on Monday, the victims as well as the accused were minors. Three minor boys were booked under Protection of Children from Sexual Offences Act (POCSO) for harassing minor girls.
Experts, social workers working for children have voiced concern rise in juvenile crime rate. Children are vulnerable and their impressionable mind can be misguided easily, said child experts stressing on need to ensure education to street children. They also emphasized on conducting programmers to being awareness among them towards such crime and their repercussions.
Sadhna Pathak, a practicing lawyer in the district court, said that the term juvenile should be relooked into. She said that after the Nirbhaya gang rape case, the SC had ordered the law enforcement agencies to ensure a background check of the minor accused if he is above 16 years of age. The accused, if found to be having mentality and intentions like that of an adult, his trial should be conducted accordingly, she said.
Manju Sharma, an activist working for children said that the street children who are deprived of education are most susceptible to crime. The government should focus more on setting up children home in every city where they can be provided with basic amenities and an environment for proper growth and development.
She said that the anti-social elements brainwash such children as their parents are unable to cater to their basic needs. She said that in a city like Bhopal two children homes were shut for lack of funds in a span of one year. The ministry of women and child development too is reluctant to conduct a census to figure out the exact number of street children so that a strategy could be chalked out for their development, added Sharma.
