The murder of 13-year-old Ishayat Shahriar Apratim in Cumilla district, Bangladesh, has reignited a nationwide conversation about juvenile violence, adolescent gang culture, and the structural failures that push children toward crime. A fresh assessment by experts, published in Bangladesh's Business Standard, lays out a sobering picture of a country struggling to protect its most vulnerable young people.

The Cumilla Case and What It Signals

The circumstances surrounding Apratim's death have yet to be fully resolved, but the case has already galvanised experts, policymakers, and civil society. It is far from isolated — rising incidents of child-on-child violence across Bangladesh have been documented in recent months, pointing to systemic breakdowns rather than one-off tragedies.

Notably, this case draws attention to the intersection of poverty, fractured family environments, peer pressure, and the unfiltered influence of digital platforms on adolescent behaviour.

Roots of the Crisis: Poverty, Dropouts and Social Fragmentation

A I Mahbub Uddin Ahmed, honorary and supernumerary professor at Dhaka University, identified poverty and unemployment as core structural drivers. He pointed to rising school dropout rates, child labour, and child marriage as symptoms of wider macro-level failures that cascade down to the individual and family level.

'The solution, therefore, cannot lie in policing alone. We must address the conditions that shape behaviour from childhood: the family, education, economic opportunity and the wider social environment. Unless these foundations are strengthened and young people are given positive alternatives, violence and crime will continue to emerge as symptoms of deeper social and institutional failures,' Ahmed said.

How Social Media Is Fuelling Adolescent Gang Culture

Helal Uddin Ahmed, an associate professor at the National Institute of Mental Health and Hospital in Dhaka, flagged the corrosive role of social media platforms. 'A kind of gang culture has emerged among adolescents, and social media has played a role in this. Whether it is TikTok, Facebook, Instagram or YouTube, technology has created an environment where young people want to grow up quickly, display aggression or appear cool. They may think, if I do something violent, I become cool. If I make a video and post it, I will gain attention,' he said.

This dynamic, experts argue, is accelerating the normalisation of violence among impressionable teenagers who lack adequate offline mentorship or structured recreational outlets.

What Experts Say Must Change

Rezaul Karim Shohag, chairman of the Department of Criminology at Dhaka University, called for coordinated action spanning families, schools, communities, law enforcement, and the state. 'Ultimately, preventing juvenile crime requires coordination between families, schools, communities, law-enforcement agencies and the state. If these institutions work separately, the problem will continue to reproduce itself. If they work together, intervention can begin before vulnerable children become involved in serious crime,' he told Business Standard.

He also pressed the government to directly tackle poverty, unemployment, school dropouts, child labour, and the chronic lack of safe recreational spaces — each of which, he argued, increases a child's vulnerability to gang recruitment.

Gaps in the Juvenile Justice System

Bangladeshi researcher Shahzeb Mahmood pointed to a justice system ill-equipped to rehabilitate rather than criminalise young offenders. 'We do not have adequate juvenile detention facilities, and instead of focusing on rehabilitation, we could end up creating more pathways for children into the criminal justice system. The lawmakers have not been making the right kind of laws,' he said.

This comes amid broader concerns about whether Bangladesh's legislative framework has kept pace with the changing nature and scale of juvenile offending. Experts warn that without urgent reform, the country risks compounding the crisis by funnelling children deeper into criminal networks rather than steering them out.

The consensus from experts is clear: addressing Bangladesh's juvenile violence crisis demands a whole-of-society response — and the window for preventive action is narrowing.