NEW DELHI: Despite stringent laws in place to deter criminals from committing crime against women, India in 2022 yet again saw a rise in such figures. According to data released by the National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) on Sunday, as many as 31,982 women were allegedly raped in the country last year. The figure included 30,965 women above 18 years and 1,017 minor girls.
This means that on an average, 87 women were sexually assaulted everyday in India. Among the states, Rajasthan recorded the maximum number of cases at 5,408, followed by Uttar Pradesh (3,692), Madhya Pradesh (3,046), Maharashtra (2,911), Haryana (1,787), (Assam 1,478), Odisha (1,464), Jharkhand (1,298), Chhattisgarh (1,246), West Bengal (1,112).
Delhi recorded the maximum cases of sexual assault among the Union Territories, at 1,212. As per the data shared by National Crime Records Bureau, the country saw a total rise of 4 per cent in crime against women in 2022 compared to the figures of previous year.
A total of 4.45 lakh cases of ‘crime against women’ were registered during 2022. In 2021, the figure stood at 4.28 lakh. The majority of cases under crime against women under Indian Penal Code were registered under ‘Cruelty by husband or his relatives’ (31.4%) followed by ‘kidnapping & abduction of women’ (19.2%),‘Assault on women with intent to outrage her modesty’ (18.7%), and ‘rape’ (7.1%).
The crime rate registered per lakh women population was 66.4 in 2022 in comparison with 64.5 in 2021. NCRB says that the primary presumption is that the upward swing in police data indicates an increase in crime and thus a reflection of the ineffectiveness of the police is “fallacious”.
“Rise in crime and increase in registration of crime by police are clearly two different things. Increase in crime numbers in a state police data may in fact be on account of certain citizen centric police initiatives, like launching of e-FIR facility or women Helpdesks, etc,” it said.
Country records 6,516 dowry deaths
Apart from sexual assault cases, the country registered 6,516 dowry deaths, 250 murders of women with rape or gangrape, 140 acid attacks, 1.4 lakh cases of cruelty by husband or in-laws, 781 cases of human trafficking and 85,300 women assaulted with intent to outrage their modesty.