The Hindu : Delhi tops metros in crime; national crime rate dips

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Saturday, Sep 13, 2003

National

National

Delhi tops metros in crime; national crime rate dips

By Our Special Correspondent

NEW DELHI SEPT. 12. The national capital, Delhi, continued to be the crime capital of the country, recording a crime rate that is more than double the national average among the metropolitan cities. During 2002, Delhi's crime rate was put at 385.8 per lakh of population, much higher than the national average of 172.3.

While the crime rate of Chennai stood at 113.5 per lakh of population, Kolkata reported an even lower rate of 90.6 and Mumbai, at 177, was slightly above the national average.

The highest crime rate among large urban centres was reported in Bhopal (740.9), followed by Vijayawada at 666, Indore 626 and Jaipur 524.

These figures were disclosed in `Crime in India-2001', an annual publication of the National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB), released by the Union Home Secretary, N. Gopalaswami, here today.

Mr. Gopalaswami said that efforts were on to complete the POLNET project, which would ultimately connect all police stations in the country in a network spanning the district headquarters, State capitals and the Centre.

He said that all the district headquarters and the State headquarters would be connected to the Centre by March next year.

Many States were finding it difficult to tabulate the information relating to the crime situation and law and order in as many as 135 columns.

While progress in several States in relation to implementation of the POLNET was by and large satisfactory, he said that it was "slow" in Chhattisgarh, Bihar and Uttar Pradesh. `Crime in India' provided useful information and analysis that helped in shaping the policies of the Home Ministry.

He said that efforts were being made to bring out regular publication of `Crime in India, 2002' by the year-end and only a provisional report had been presented for 2002.

During 2001, the number of crimes against women was 1,43,795, as against 1,41,373 cases in 2000, primarily due to an increase in the cases of torture and molestation. Cases of rape, dowry deaths and sexual harassment had actually declined.

The all-India crime rate was 14 per lakh of population. Andhra Pradesh reported the highest incidence of crime against women — 18,738 out of 1,33,915 cases in 2002. Rape cases have shown a decline over the last three years from 16,496 in 2000 to 16,075 in 2001 and to 14,806 in 2002, the report said.

Dowry deaths also showed a marginal decline during the same period — 6,995 in 2000 to 6,851 in 2001 and 6,756 in 2002. From 1998 to 2000, approximately 25,000 cases were registered annually under various crimes against the Scheduled Castes.

There was a sharp rise in the incidence of these cases in 2001, when 33,501 cases were registered but 2002 witnessed a sharp decline to 23,272 cases.

The average total cognisable crime since 1998 was 17.7 lakh cases per year till 2001, which declined to 16.83 lakh cases in 2002.

A gradual improvement in the crime situation has bee observed over the last five years. While the crime rate in 1998 was 183.2 cases per lakh of population, it improved to 176.7 in 2000 and 172.3 in 2001.

The States which contributed significantly towards this decline are Goa, Gujarat, Maharashtra, Rajasthan, Orissa and the North-Eastern states of Mizoram, Nagaland, Sikkim and Tripura, the report said.

Under the violent crimes category, militancy-hit Jammu and Kashmir and Arunachal Pradesh registered 50.3 and 36.7 crimes per lakh population. Rajasthan (36.6) and Kerala (36.3) have also reported higher crime rates. The national average is 22.5. Other States that reported a high violent crime rate were Assam (33.3), Manipur (31.3) and Delhi (30.5). Uttar Pradesh, with a crime rate of 23, reported 21 per cent (7,601 out of 36,202) of the murder cases in the country.

The fact that 21 per cent of the victims were felled with firearms showed widespread availability and use of firearms. Bihar reported the highest — 20.6 per cent (1,251 out of 6,082) — dacoity cases during 2001.

The pendency of IPC cases in trial courts in the country has shown a sharp increase.

At the end of 2001, as many as 51,17,864 IPC cases were pending trial in various courts and 26,292 cases had taken more than 10 years for completion of trial.

Printer friendly page
Send this article to Friends by E-Mail

National