India’s National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) Monday released its Crime in India 2021 Report. The report registered 31,677 cases of rape in 2021 for a daily average of 87 cases. The findings suggest a 12.9 percent increase in rape cases registered over the previous year’s figure of 28,046 cases.
The NCRB, which functions under the Ministry of Home Affairs, is a nodal agency with a mandate to collect and analyze crime data from the states and union territories across India. The report revealed that a total of 4,28,278 cases of ‘crimes against women’ were registered for 2021, denoting a 15.3 percent increase over the cases registered in 2020. Crimes against women include rape, rape with murder, dowry deaths, acid attacks, domestic violence and others. Cruelty by husband or relatives accounted for 31.8 percent of all crimes against women, assault on women with intent to outrage her modesty accounted for 20.8 percent, kidnapping and abduction accounted for 17.6 percent and rape accounted for 7.4 percent.
The data also showed that in 96.5 percent of the rape cases registered, the offender was someone known to the victim. Further, roughly 10 percent of rape cases registered were perpetrated against minors. The western state of Rajasthan registered the highest number of rape cases at 6337. Madhya Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh and Maharashtra also registered high figures. Among the union territories, Delhi registered the highest number of rape cases at 1250 in 2021.
The report’s authors note that they tabulate data as per the “principal offence rule” for classification of crime. This means that since in a majority of cases, there are several offenses involved in a single complaint, only the “most heinous crime” drawing the maximum punishment is considered for the purposes of counting. For example, murder with rape is counted as murder. Thus, there is a high likelihood that numbers for many offenses, including rape, are under-reported.
The data in the report may also be distorted due to inefficiencies and gaps at local levels which fail to capture the true figures. It is also critical to note that higher figures can sometimes reflect to better reporting, improvement in processes, and decreased stigma in filing a report rather than an empirical rise in crime.
