Kneejerk reaction to crime by minors causes major recoil

CHENNAI: It’s not much of a surprise to S Bangara when familiar faces vanish from class in the government higher secondary school in Semmencherry. So when five names were struck off the register last year, he didn’t think anything was particularly amiss. Little did he know that the names would surface again, this time linked to petty crime.
Though the five adolescents protested their innocence after the local police accused them of cellphone theft, they won infamy overnight.
“The entire neighbourhood woke up when policemen came around asking where we were at 3am that night,” Manish*, 16, said. “Though the policemen eventually let us off, everyone in our neighbourhood looks at us as criminals.”
Squatting in a dimly-lit shanty in Tsunami Colony with three friends, the teen spoke of the 10 hours they spent at the police station.
“If they (the policemen) know we talked to you, they’ll probably frame us in an unrelated case,” Class 10 dropout Abilash*, 17, said. Two of the boys said the policemen mauled them to so they would “confess” to the crime.
Semmencherry police had illegally detained the boys based on security camera footage from a mobile phone store which showed two individuals, an 18-year-old identified as Hari, and a 16-year-old boy, break open the shutters and flee with six cellphones. A probe revealed that the duo had distributed the phones to six of their friends.
Mohan*, a Class 11 student, the only one in the group who is still in school, said Hari gave him a phone but he had no role in the theft. “I missed a day in school because I was stuck in the station. Today, I felt isolated in class,” he said.
While the 16-year-old caught on footage was sent to the Government Observation Home For Boys & Girls in Kellys, Hari is still on the run. He will probably not show up on the police radar till it is for a much more serious crime.
Such is the nature of the beast: A juvenile in conflict with the law, in almost every part of the country, often turns to a lifetime of crime. Poor interpretation of the law, peer pressure and stress to solve crimes in a city increasingly besieged by everything from ne’er-do-wells to hardened felons blurs the line between the keepers of the law and the lawless.
Policemen knocking on doors after midnight is not new for people in Tsunami Colony. Caught between a pincer of penury and illiteracy, young residents often fit the bill for policemen searching for criminals.
Activists slammed police for their handling of the cellphone robbery. “The boys may or may not have committed the crime, but the policemen had no business to take charge and behave like they did,” said S Kannayiram, former field officer with the department of social defense.
The Juvenile Justice (Care and Protection of Children) Act, 2015, says policemen have to produce a minor before the juvenile justice board within 24 hours of detention and the minor should be housed in an observation home.
“Under no scenario should police beat a minor or keep him in a police station or jail,” Kannayiram said. “For policemen it’s easier with the poor. They have no money or bargaining power.”
The rules, expert say, are not to punish violators but to help rehabilitate them.
Police officers maintain, however, that they follow all “norms” while probing cases involving minors. “Policemen did not randomly pick the boys. They were caught in the act by security TV cameras,” a senior police officer said.
(* Names changed to protect identity)