India reported 4,05,861 cases of crimes against women in 2019 and Uttar Pradesh topped the list with 59,853 such incidents, according to the annual National Crime Record Bureau’s “Crime in India” 2019 report released on Tuesday.
From 2018, the rate of crime against women has risen by 7.3%, with the country recording an average 87 rape cases every day in 2019. Assam reported the highest rate of crimes against women at 117.8 per lakh population.
“Majority of these cases under the Indian Penal Code were registered under ‘cruelty by husband or his relatives’ (30.9%) followed by ‘Assault on women with intent to outrage her modesty’ (21.8%), ‘kidnapping and abduction of women’ (17.9%),” the NCRB data for 2019 showed.
The crime bureau data also showed a significant rise in cases of crimes against children. From 2018, crimes against children have gone up by 4.5% in 2019. A total of 1.48 lakh cases of crime against children were registered in 2019. Of these, about 46.6% were cases of kidnapping and 35.3% cases were related to sexual offences.
Uttar Pradesh also had the highest number of crimes against girl children under the POCSO Act with 7,444 cases, followed by Maharashtra (6,402) and Madhya Pradesh (6,053).
The NCRB collected data from 36 states and Union Territories and 53 metropolitan cities. The home ministry said West Bengal did not share its latest data and its 2018 data has been used to arrive at national and city-wise figures.
Murder and kidnapping cases drop
Murder cases across India in 2019 reported a slight dip – 0.3% – from the previous year, showed data from the crime bureau. The country recorded an average of 79 murder cases daily in 2019 and total of 28,918 cases of murder were registered in the year. In 2018, as many as 29,017 murder cases were registered
‘’Dispute’’ (9,516 cases) was the motive in most murder cases followed by “personal vendetta or enmity’’ (3,833 cases).
Kidnapping cases also reported a decline of 0.7% in 2019. A total of 1,05,037 such cases were registered in 2019, down from 1,05,734 cases in 2018, the data showed. Among the kidnapping victims, 23,104 were male and 84,921 were female in 2019.
During 2019, a total of 96,295 kidnapped people (22,794 male and 73,501 female) were found and 95,551 of them were rescued alive.
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