JOIN US"About 46.5 per cent of the arrestees belonged to 18-30 years reflecting the drift of younger people taking to crimes," said a just-released report by the National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB).
Out of a total of 77,51,631 people arrested in 2009, about 36,04,500 belonged to the age group of 18-30 years.
"A large chunk of juveniles (64.1 per cent) belonged to the poor families whose annual income was up to Rs 25,000. The share of juveniles hailing from middle income group (ranging from Rs 50,000 to Rs 2,00,000) was 12.8 per cent," said the report titled 'Crime in India 2009'.
Among the age group of 7-18 years, the statistics said, there were 33,642 arrests made in that year for various criminal offences, including murder, rape, kidnapping, theft, arms smuggling and drug trafficking. Of them 2,092, or 6.2 per cent, were girls. In 2008, a total of 34,507 boys and girls of the said age group were arrested.
Theft topped the list of crimes for which 6,540 juveniles were arrested in 2009. Burglary was second in which 3,210 juveniles were apprehended, followed by hurting (4,386) and involvement in riots (2,025).
Nearly 1,000 were held for their involvement in murder cases, while 728 were caught for attempting to murder. There were also 887 arrests in rape cases, according to the report.
Other crimes that saw massive arrests in 2009 included gambling (1,216), kidnapping and abduction (783) and molestation (530).
In state-wise classification, Maharashtra tops the list of juvenile crimes with 6,972 arrests for various IPC and special and local law crimes, followed by Madhya Pradesh where police have apprehended 6,186 people up to 18 years of age.
Chhattisgarh is placed third with 5,112 such arrests, followed by Tamil Nadu (2,927), Gujarat (2,466) and Rajasthan (2,456).
Of the total 33,642 arrests made across the country, in 4,986 cases the culprits were sent to home after advice or admonition, while 5,420 were sent to special juvenile homes, 1,113 were dealt with by fines and 1,507 were acquitted or otherwise the cases involving them were disposed of.
However, more than 14,500 cases are still pending in various courts, the report added.