In a shocking incident on Thursday, 23 November, a 17-year-old college student was stabbed to death by five boys in school uniforms in a bus full of passengers in New Delhi.
The boy was immediately taken to the nearby hospital where he was declared brought dead. The boy was identified as Mohammad Anas, a first-year student of commerce.
All the five juveniles have been arrested and preliminary enquiry revealed the incident took place as he had objected to them stealing his mobile phone.
The phone has been recovered from the accused.
The incident took place on a government-run cluster bus on the Punjabi Bagh-Badarpur route at 3:30 pm on Thursday.
‘Accused are juvenile students aged between 12 to 15. They hopped into the bus near Ashram Chowk, tried to rob the victim's mobile phone and killed him when showed resistance,’ said Romil Baniya, DCP of South East Delhi.
The murder weapon, a small knife that was used to slit Anas’s throat, has also been recovered.
The police said they will be presented before the Juvenile Justice Board for further custody.
There was difficulty tracing Anas’ identity and only after his family members approached the police station asking for the missing boy were they able to find more details.
There were at least 40 other passengers in the bus at the time of the murder, but no one intervened.
Hindustan Times quoted the conductor of the bus, Jai Bhagwan, who was a witness to the crime, "Everything happened quickly. Before I could react, they had stabbed the youth and jumped out of the bus.”
Anas had boarded the orange cluster bus at Ashram Chowk bus stop at around 3.15 pm. A few hundred metres later, the bus was caught in a traffic jam on Mathura Road and that’s when the boys clad in white shorts and navy blue pants boarded the bus.
An argument turned into scuffle when Anas accused them of stealing his mobile phone and tried to search their pockets. The boys then jumped out of the bus.
The boys reportedly told the police that they carried a weapon as they often stole money and valuables from passengers on buses.
The Delhi government has deputed a civil defence volunteer in every bus, but the Delhi Integrated Multi-Modal Transit System (DIMTS), which operates cluster buses, confirmed on Friday that there was no volunteer on the bus.
Government figures show 56 juveniles in Delhi were involved in murder cases in the previous two years. Overall, 2,499 crimes in the city were committed by juveniles in 2016, according to police data.
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