Today's Criminals, Yesterday's Scripts: Examining the Influence of Web Series and Fictional Crime Narratives on Contemporary Crime in India
copycat crime, web series, India, imitative behaviour, media effects, crime steerer, forensic psychology
The rapid growth of India's streaming and web series industry has coincided with a series of widely reported criminal cases in which offenders have explicitly cited fictional crime content as a source of inspiration or instruction. This paper examines the phenomenon of imitative, or “copycat,” crime in India through the lens of documented case reports and the broader psychological and criminological literature on media-influenced criminal behaviour. Two illustrative Indian cases are discussed in detail: a 2022 Hyderabad kidnapping ring in which the accused acknowledged that their methods were modelled on the Netflix series Money Heist, and a 2024 Meerut double murder in which the accused stated they had drawn on the web series Asur for ideas about evidence concealment and evasion of police detection. These cases are situated within the theoretical framework of the copycat effect, which holds that media characteristics, individual vulnerability factors, and cultural-environmental conditions interact to produce imitative criminal behaviour. The paper also reviews survey-based Indian research linking crime web series consumption to attitudes and self-reported mood states among viewers, and considers National Crime Records Bureau data on reported offences in relation to concerns about media glamorization of crime. The paper concludes that while available evidence does not establish that fictional crime content causes criminal behaviour in a simple sense, case data suggest that such content can function as a behavioural template or “crime steerer” for individuals already inclined toward offending, with implications for media literacy, content regulation, and forensic psychological practice in India.
"Today's Criminals, Yesterday's Scripts: Examining the Influence of Web Series and Fictional Crime Narratives on Contemporary Crime in India", JETNR - JOURNAL OF EMERGING TRENDS AND NOVEL RESEARCH (www.JETNR.org), ISSN:2984-9276, Vol.4, Issue 6, page no.b189-b193, June-2026, Available :https://rjpn.org/JETNR/papers/JETNR2606145.pdf
Volume 4
Issue 6,
June-2026
Pages : b189-b193
Paper Reg. ID: JETNR_235152
Published Paper Id: JETNR2606145
Downloads: 00074
Research Area: Others area
Country: Delhi, Delhi, India
ISSN: 2984-9276 | IMPACT FACTOR: 9.87 Calculated By Google Scholar | ESTD YEAR: 2023
An International Scholarly Open Access Journal, Peer-Reviewed, Refereed Journal Impact Factor 9.87 Calculate by Google Scholar and Semantic Scholar | AI-Powered Research Tool, Multidisciplinary, Monthly, Multilanguage Journal Indexing in All Major Database & Metadata, Citation Generator
Publisher: RJPN (IJPublication) Janvi Wave
