‘Cruelty by husband or his relatives’ accounts for majority of cases of crime against women, shows NCRB data | India News

NEW DELHI: As overall cases of crime against women at 4.45 lakh rose by 4% in 2022, ‘cruelty by husband or his relatives’, like in the past years, yet again accounted for a majority of the cases at 31.4%. In terms of numbers this adds to up more than 1.40 lakh incidents registered involving 1.44 lakh victims, as per the “Crime In India” report for 2022 brought out by the National Crime Records Bureau.
Delhi registers highest rate of crime against women in the country
With 14,247 cases in 2022, Delhi registered the highest rate of crime against women in the country at 144.4 — way above the country’s average rate of 66.4.Such cases in Delhi stood at 14,277 in 2021 and 10,093 in 2020.In absolute numbers Uttar Pradesh (65,743) registered the maximum cases of crime against women followed by Maharashtra (45,331), Rajasthan (45,058), West Bengal (34,738) and Madhya Pradesh (32,765). These five states together accounted for around 50% of the total cases lodged in the country in 2022.
Reflecting a continuing trend, crimes related to “cruelty by husband or his relatives” accounted for 31.8% (1.36 lakh) of all crimes against women in 2021 too which was nearly 2% more than 2020. This percentage was 30.9% in 2019.
In 2022, the overall crime rate registered per lakh women population stood at a high 66.4 and this was an increase in comparison with 64.5 in 2021. Marking a shift from the previous year’s trend, in 2022, kidnapping and abduction of women accounted for the next big chunk of crimes at 19.2% cases which in numbers accounts for 85,310 cases and 88,243 victims.
This was followed by cases of assault on women with intent to outrage her modesty (18.7%), and rape (7.1%).
In 2021, it was cases of assault on women with the intent to outrage her modesty that formed the second big category of crime against women at 20.8% followed by kidnapping and abduction (17.6%) and rape (7.4%). Rape cases accounted for 7.5% of total cases in 2020 and 7.9% in 2019.
The report in a separate section lists cases of murder with rape/gangrape and puts the number of such incidents at 248 involving 250 victims in 2022. There were 284 cases in 2021 involving 293 victims. The case data on rape incidents shows that there were 31,516 cases and 31,982 victims including 1,017 girls below 18 years. As many as 88 minor victims were between 6 to 12 years and 32 girls less than six.