Underage? Not anymore.

Treat Juvenile Rapist as an Adult and Punish Him and If proven they should be Hanged. #HangTheRapist

He's young. Not quite an adult. 

Attends school, plays sports, reads young adult novels and prefers eating junk food. Sure, there are bad influences at times - a cigarette here, some bad words there. But he's still young. Not quite an adult.

Or so you thought.

Look closely at him. Can you see the hideousness behind that face? Can you read his dirty mind? Can you look past his innocent face to reveal the filth in his character? 

No. That's because he's "juvenile" for you. Just another underage individual who probably made a silly mistake and repents it. You are confident - he won't do this again.

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Frankly speaking, when it comes to committing crimes like rapes, I don't understand the word - "juvenile". Even if we label them as "under maturity", we fail to acknowledge the maturity of this young adult when it comes to raping a girl.  

• What's so underage in that term anyways? 
• He was present at the time of the crime and he also helped in it, didn't he? 
• Wasn't he wise (rather sane enough) to make the decision? 
• Even if he was influenced into the decision, didn't he know the simple difference between right and wrong?

So then why should we treat them any different from any other accused person? 

We have read time and again of numerous incidents involving juvenile defendants. A 3-year-old accidentally murders his father with a pistol. A 10 year-old school kid open fires with a gun in the class room murdering scores of children. In these cases, you could still try the accused in juvenile courts. The accused are either kids or mere-adolescents. They were surely unaware of the repercussions. 

But like in the case of the 2012 Delhi rape case, the so-called "juvenile" was 17 years and 6 months old on the day of the incident. Let's not forget, the news described him as the most brutal of the six accused. Do we still think he was only partially involved in the rape? Or that he was probably unaware of the consequences?

In my opinion, it's time we changed the juvenile age for rape crimes. Let's bring it down by 5-6 years. Any age higher than that threshold should be subjected to adult punishment. My mother always says - "It's better to nip the problem at its bud than let it flourish into a huge creeper." I agree. Let's hang the juvenile who are convicted in rape crimes unless proven otherwise. That's the only fair way to deal with such dirty minds. 

Leave him today and he will return tomorrow. With a bigger vengeance. With a much more gruesome crime. He's surely not going to learn from his first time experience. 

"You can’t make the same mistake twice, the second time you make it, it’s a choice." 

Or so the saying goes. But in this case, I reckon even the first time the juvenile are involved in a crime of personal choice and decision.

What's your take on this issue? Do share your thoughts.

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Yours' truly,

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