AHMEDABAD: Gujarat recorded 4,890 atrocity cases against Scheduled Castes (SCs) and Scheduled Tribes (STs) from 2022 till 2024. The data showed conviction rates remained sharply below the national benchmark while investigation pendency declined and victim relief increased.
Data placed before the Rajya Sabha showed that Gujarat registered 1,609 such cases in 2022, 1,680 in 2023 and 1,601 in 2024.
SC cases accounted for around 81% of the three-year total.
Investigation backlog falls by 8.2%
Gujarat’s investigation pendency fell from 489 cases in 2022 to 449 in 2024, a drop of 8.2%. Pending ST investigations dropped from 125 to 90, while SC pendency barely moved from 364 to 359.
The figures show that the overall investigation backlog has eased, but the improvement has been uneven between SC and ST cases.
Conviction rates plunge after 2023 rise
Gujarat’s SC conviction rate increased from 4.4% in 2022 to 7.4% in 2023, before falling to 5.4% in 2024. The ST conviction rate followed a similar but sharper reversal, rising from 8% in 2022 to 11.7% in 2023, before plunging to 4.5% in 2024.
The gap with the national picture is striking. In 2024, the national conviction rates stood at 33.9% for SC cases and 33.2% for ST cases, placing Gujarat substantially below the all-India figures.
These conviction rates are calculated on the basis of cases in which trials were completed. They should therefore not be interpreted as the percentage of all cases registered in Gujarat that ended up in conviction.
Victim relief rises sharply
The number of victims provided relief increased from 1,623 in 2022-23 to 2,195 in 2023-24, and further to 2,659 in 2024-25.
Central assistance to Gujarat also surged, rising from Rs 4.2 crore in 2022-23 to Rs 29.8 crore in 2023-24, before reaching a little over Rs 30 crore in 2024-25. Over the three financial years, the state received around Rs 64 crore as central assistance, with 6,477 victims provided relief.
The data therefore shifts the focus beyond the number of cases registered. For Gujarat’s criminal justice system, the critical question is what happens after registration, how efficiently investigations move forward, how cases reach completed trials and, ultimately, how many result in convictions.
