West Bengal has been witnessing a steady rise in crimes against women in the last few years. While Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee would like to dismiss the June 7 case of gang-rape and murder of a 20-year-old college student in North 24 Parganas district as a “small incident”, the latest numbers released by the National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) for 2012 is disturbing. The State has once again topped the list with the highest incidents of crimes against women with 30,942 cases, compared to 29,133 cases in 2011.
Bengal alone accounted for 12.67 per cent of the total number of crimes committed against women last year. It was followed by Andhra Pradesh and Uttar Pradesh with 28,171 and 23,569 cases respectively.
The State government has, however, refuted the claims and said the number of rapes had actually decreased.
Banerjee had faced the ire of protestors when she had gone to visit the Barasat victim’s family on Monday. Her visit, which came 10 days after the incident, didn’t do go down well with the locals, especially women. She lost her temper at being heckled and branded the protestors CPM supporters.