Dealing with the cases of juvenile delinquency is turning to be a hard nut to crack for Chandigarh police as the number of juveniles involved in serious criminal cases is increasing rapidly. While some of them were found to be involved in petty offences, there were others as well who were involved in crimes of heinous nature.
As per detailed statistics provided by the Chandigarh Police, 624 juveniles were arrested in 408 cases during past four years and 292 juveniles out of 624 were arrested for petty offences including snatching, pick-pocketing, gambling and thefts.
Chandigarh Police, in 2013 arrested 18 juveniles who were found involved in 15 cases. The city has witnessed 22 serious incidents of crime involving 26 juveniles during the past four years. These incidents included cases of murder and attempt to murder.
Recently on April 9, police arrested a gang of thieves, four of them were identified as juvenile and also recovered a large number of stolen motorcycles.
Chandigarh Police on February this year arrested five people for allegedly murdering Rajesh Kumar alias Ricky (23) a resident of Daddu Majra.
Two out of the five accused were juveniles in the incident. Both the accused arrested in the case, were school students.
In another incident, six juveniles were arrested for murder charges for allegedly murdering a Class XI student of DAV School, Sector 8, Shubham, in July 2011. On September, 2011, a 21-year-old Pushkar was killed by juveniles, outside Government Model Senior Secondary School (GMSSS), Sector-19.
While a 35 year-old auto driver, Vijay Shankar Dwivedi was killed in December, 2010 by a group of school going students.
Talking to The Pioneer, a senior police official said that juveniles have been involved and arrested in many serious and petty crimes.
"It has been a tough task for the police to deal with them as most of them are not detected," he said.