Incidents of crimes against women, children, Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes as well as cyber cases rose in 2022 in comparison to the year before it, the annual Crime in India report published on Sunday showed.

The report, which is the principal reference for crime statistics in the country since 1953, is prepared by the National Crime Records Bureau and is usually released by the end of July or in August. This time, however, it was released when the counting of votes was underway for the Assembly elections in four states.

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According to the report, 4,45,256 cases of crimes against women were registered in 2022, an increase of 4% compared to 4,28,278 in 2021.

The majority of cases were related to cruelty by spouses or their relatives (31.4%), followed by kidnapping and abduction (19.2%), assault “with intent to outrage modesty” (18.7%) and rape (7.1%).

The report also showed that Delhi recorded 14,158 incidents of crime against women in 2022, the highest figure for the third consecutive year among 19 metropolitan cities in the country. About 186.9 crimes were reported for every 1,00,000 women.

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Overall, 1,62,449 cases of crimes against children were registered during 2022, which is an increase of 8.7% when compared to 2021 when 1,49,404 cases had been filed. The report said that 45.7% of cases last year were related to kidnapping and abduction and 39.7% were filed under the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences Act.

Data showed that crimes against Scheduled Castes increased by 13.1%, from 50,900 cases in 2021 to 57,582 cases last year.

The crimes against Scheduled Tribes jumped by 14.3% from 8,802 to 10,064 cases last year.

Cyber crimes rose by 24.4% to 65,893 cases compared to 52,974 in 2021, data showed. “During 2022, 64.8% of cyber-crime cases registered were for the motive of fraud [42,710 out of 65,893 cases] followed by extortion with 5.5% [3,648 cases] and sexual exploitation with 5.2% [3,434 cases],’ the report said.