While a raging debate questions whether Rahul Raj, the 25-year-old bus-hijacker from Patna, should have been shot dead by the police on Monday, city psychiatrists say the incident has thrown the plight of India’s youth into sharp relief.
It is often the youth, experts say, who are adversely affected by incidents around them, and in Rahul’s case, his actions were reportedly fuelled by the sons-of-the-soil movement launched by Maharashtra Navnirman Sena (MNS) president, Raj Thackeray.
“Even abroad, this is nothing new. Most of the boys involved in similar incidents like the Virginia Tech massacre, or the Columbine High School tragedy in the US, were introverts and gave no inkling that they would ever be involved in violent outbursts,” said Vijay Raghavan, faculty, Centre for Criminology and Justice, Tata Institute of Social Sciences (TISS). More recently, a student killed 10 others in a school in Finland in September.
The context of the incident is a very important factor — in this case, the Bihar-Maharashtra divide — was on Rahul’s mind. “There is a lot of anger on both sides. And it is the youth who are feeling shortchanged,” Raghavan pointed out.
According to Dr Yusuf Matcheswala, psychiatrist, Massina and JJ Hospital, collective anger may give rise to a different form of terrorism. “I am very concerned about the backlash of this incident. This has already had an injurious effect on the minds of people, particularly the youth, from those states.”
