HYDERABAD: Telangana finds a place for itself among the top 10 states in the country, coming in at ninth place, with respect to the total number of crimes committed against women, according to the Crime in India 2015 report of the NCRB.
However, experts on data science and those working closely with women rights feel there is no reason to hit the panic button.
Experts attribute the rise in number of cases to increased and better reporting of crime. However, even if the number of instances of reporting has risen, most experts are skeptical about how the numbers are to be interpreted.
“The problem is at the data collection point. If a particular information is not collected, it affects the accuracy of the data. One cannot compare the data of two different states as they have different police forces and there are a lot of other variables with respect to culture,” said Nilakantan S, data scientist and an expert in the field of data sciences.
“One must not just look at the under reporting of data but also at the over reporting aspect,” said Ved Kumari, criminal law and crime statistics expert. If one must compare, it has to be among districts within a state, as such major cities will register higher numbers of reporting that rural areas, she added.
“I am not shocked by the figures. It’s one of the few states that have very few specific institutions such as the SHE teams which is why more women are coming forward, thus resulting in increased reporting,” said Sunitha Krishnan, a social activist and co-founder of Prajwala. Earlier, most of these issues were brushed under the carpet. Stalking was not considered a part of sexual harassment but thanks to the SHE teams, things are changing,” she added.
Meanwhile, additional commissioner of Police, SHE Teams, Swati Lakra, said, “If I start looking into the statistics, my people will stop registering cases. So, I don’t. We have given lot of platforms and ways through which citizens can approach us. We do our job but do not reveal any identity which is why the number of cases are increasing,” she said.
How it functions
The State Crimes Records Bureau (SCRB) is the nodal agency responsible for collecting data on crimes within the state. Each police station reports its data to the District Crimes Records Bureau, which then files the data with the SCRB. The NCRB then collects data from each state level crimes records bureaus.
“We will go online in a couple of months. All the data will be recorded online through Crime and Criminal Tracking Network & Systems making it fool proof,” said M Srinivas, SP, SCRB. We have got good recommendations from the NCRB for our way of collecting data, he added.