Property Offences Top Juvenile Crime
The bulk of crimes involving juveniles, or children in conflict with law (CCL), involved cases of what police officials typically describe as property offences
HYDERABAD: The bulk of crimes involving juveniles, or children in conflict with law (CCL), involved cases of what police officials typically describe as property offences. The latest nation-wide data released by the Centre has put such crimes at around 43 per cent of all offences involving minors.
According to ‘The Children in India 2025’ report, released by the Union ministry of statistics and programme implementation, on Thursday, crimes categorized as theft, burglary, robbery, and dacoity totalled 13,297 in the year 2022 of the total 30,555 cases registered against juveniles for various crimes.
The report made it clear that the juvenile justice system in India that defines anyone under 18 years as a ‘child in conflict with law’, recognises that an “offence may be committed without criminal intent, stemming instead from immaturity or a lack of awareness about the consequences of their actions.”
However, the trend of cases involving juveniles was an increasing one, the report said reporting that in 2019, these cases totalled 29,768 in 2019, while in 2020, 31,170 such cases were filed.
This trend more or less also reflected how such crimes were reported and cases filed in Telangana and Andhra Pradesh between 2020 and 2022. In Telangana, the report said there were 1,013 juvenile crimes registered in 2020 which rose to 1,152 in 2021 with 1,096 such cases filed in 2022. In Andhra Pradesh, the figures for these years were put at 759, 934, and 912 respectively.
Across the country, in 2022, 2,013 cases of attempt to murder by juveniles were registered in addition to 1,286 cases of murder, 1,022 cases of kidnap and abduction, followed by 989 cases of assault on women to outrage their modesty.
The report said traffic accidents accounted for more than half of the deaths of those under 18 years of age in 2022 with 13,050 losing their lives in different kinds of traffic incidents, while 3,837 deaths were attributed to drowning.
Another disturbing finding reported by the Centre related to suicide among juveniles, which it said touched 10,205 in 2022. The most often cited reason for such loss of life was attributed to family problems with 2,566 cases, followed by issues related to love claiming 1,578 young lives, followed by examinations related issues which the report said resulted in 1,123 young persons taking their lives in that year.