Letters: Rationalising crime

The editorial “India’s two futures” (January 1) attempts to rationalise the behaviour of the six accused in the Delhi gang-rape case, and draw economic policy implications. No amount of deprivation – be it a broken family, unemployment or lack of security – can justify the brutality of their act. The write-up talks about the problem of unemployment suffered by the juvenile (one of the offenders) for many years. Such an attempt to theorise the crime tantamounts to trivialising studies of social sciences. There is also an urgent imperative to lower the upper age limit for juveniles from the present 18 years. This limit made sense in the yesteryears with dramatically different socio-economic milieu.

 

T Gopinath Mumbai

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