The cases of rioting- communal, sectarian, political, industrial, caste -witnessed a drop in some states of Bharat, namely in Assam and Uttar Pradesh by 80% and 50% respectively between 2018 and 2022. On the contrary, Chhattisgarh recorded over 44% jump, as per latest crime data put out by the National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB).
Spanning the course of the entire country, incidents of rioting saw a 34% dip between 2018 and 2022. Records suggest that communal riots in particular fell to just 272 in 2022 from 378 in 2021, with Madhya Pradesh accounting for 68 incidents of communal or religious rioting in 2022, Bihar 60 and Jharkhand, 46. Uttar Pradesh, as per NCRB’s ‘Crime in India — 2022’ report recorded nil communal riots in 2022. Meanwhile, Kerala accounted for the highest political riots in the country in 2023, with around 301 such incidents. Odisha reported 224 political riots and Maharashtra, 86.
Glancing at the state wise comparison of NCRB crime data between 2018 and 2022, it is evident that while all-India murder cases reflected a declining trend. However, murders reported in Rajasthan and Chhattisgarh saw a jump of 21.6% and 10.5% respectively. Uttar Pradesh, found itself on the contrasting end of spectrum and saw a corresponding decline of more than 10% in murder cases.
Among the other states, the highest increase in cases of crimes against women in the last 5 years was in Rajasthan (61.7%) and Tamil Nadu (58.1%) while Assam saw such cases reduced by almost 50%.
While there was a 5.5% all-India decline in rape cases between 2018 and 2022, there was a far notable decline rate in Assam and Madhya Pradesh. Rape cases registered in Assam fell by 32.5% and in Madhya Pradesh, by 44.2% during this period. On the other hand, Bihar saw an increase of 35.3% in heinous rape cases, as did Telangana and Rajasthan with a 34.3% and 24.5% rise respectively. West Bengal, however, accounted for one-fourth or 31 of the total 124 acid attacks nationwide.
Robbery cases registered under Sections 392, 394 and 397 of the Indian Penal Code (IPC) witnessed a notable decline across the country. Between 2018 and 2022, there was an increase of 58.7% in robbery cases registered in Rajasthan, 17.9% in Tamil Nadu, 41% in Odisha, 17.9% in Chhattisgarh, 26% in Jharkhand and 31.8% in Bihar.
Uttar Pradesh, however, saw the steepest decline of 35% in robbery cases in the last five years. In Gujarat and Assam, robbery cases halved in this period.
Assam, which has a Scheduled Caste (SC) population of 22.3 lakh, did not see a single incident of rape against SC while Kerala witnessed 192 rape cases against SCs.
In Bihar, cases of murder particularly of persons belonging to SCs almost doubled in the last 5 years, from 84 cases in 2018 to 168 cases in 2022. Talking about UP, where SC population is almost three times that of Bihar, recorded an 18.5% decline.
Gujarat, with an SC population of 40.7 lakh, crimes against SCs declined by more than 10% in the last 5 years. Telangana, having SC population of 54.3 lakh, saw such crimes spike by 18.6% in the last 5 years, from 1,507 in 2018 to 1,787 in 2022.
The highest rise in cases of crimes against SCs was recorded in Rajasthan, at over 90% in the last five years. Crimes against Scheduled Tribes (STs) in the last 5 years rose by over 346% in Tamil Nadu (346.7%), 130% in Rajasthan and 1285 in Bihar (128.1%). This contributed to the all-India rise of 54.2% in crimes against STs.
