Meanwhile, he has undergone another round of counseling for the three years he has been in a system meant to reform under-age criminals. But in an insightful, even if disillusioning interview his counselor gave to a news portal, the professional admitted failure. The minor who had shown little remorse at the start of his time at the home continues to be blasé, said the counselor, adding key processes of the reformation journey have not been applied in his case because of threat to his safety — among them, moral science tutoring and communication time with co-inmates.

While the intelligentsia debates loopholes of the Juvenile Justice Act, and the merits of the Modi government’s Juvenile Justice Bill — which if passed will allow for trying those between 16 and 18 under the Indian Penal Code in adult courts and, if found guilty in serious crimes, to be lodged in regular prisons — the question the counselor’s account demands is how effective is the reformation principle in the first place? If rape is an expression of power rather than an act of sex; if the minor brutalised the victim, egged on by the four adults ‘to be a man’, has the state succeeded in ‘reversing’ the most dangerous of radical attitudes — misogyny?