Data shows nothing has changed since the Nirbhaya case, and crimes against women have risen.
New Delhi: The gangrape and murder of a 20-year-old Dalit girl from a village in Uttar Pradesh’s Hathras district has brought back memories of the horror of the Nirbhaya case in which the girl was similarly gangraped, brutally beaten up and left to die on the streets of the national capital some seven years back. However, since then, despite the laws being made more stringent against rape and crimes against women, little seems to have changed in India.
A dig at the crime statistics data of the country also shows that nothing seems to have changed over these years and in fact, crimes against women have shown a rise over the years. The National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) crime data released this year shows that crimes against women have increased in the country by a little over 7% since 2018.
The NCRB data from 2017 to 2019 also shows that more than one lakh cases of rape had been reported in India, and this continues even after multiple protests erupted across the country several times, seeking stricter punishment for crimes against women.
Every year, more than 32,000 cases of rapes are registered in India. In 2019 alone, 32,033 cases of rape were registered in different states. Taking this statistic from NCRB into consideration, more than 87 cases of rape are reported every day in India and, in turn, every day, each hour, at least three cases of rape were registered in India in 2019.
Among the states, Rajasthan has been the most notorious state when it comes to crimes against women. The state recorded 5,997 cases of rape in 2019 alone. Uttar Pradesh, Maharashtra, Madhya Pradesh and Kerala are also some of the states that have fared poorly when it comes to safety of women. These states have recorded some of the highest incidences of rapes cases in their areas.
Delhi being the national capital and one of the metropolitan cities has also performed poorly when it comes to women’s safety and security. The national capital recorded over 1,200 cases of rape in 2019 alone.
The Scheduled Caste community is also one of the most vulnerable communities when it comes to women’s safety, as per the NCRB report. The NCRB report says that among the total 32,033 rape cases registered in India in 2019, 11% of these cases were from the Dalit community.
According to NCRB data, last year, every day, 10 Dalit women were raped in India and in total, 2019 witnessed 3,514 rape cases from the Dalit community.
Among the 3,514 rape cases registered from the Dalit community, more than 35% of these rapes were committed on minor girls. The NCRB’s data states that last year alone, 1,128 minor Dalit girls were raped in the country.
Uttar Pradesh, which is currently in the eye of the storm with the death and gangrape of a young Dalit girl, is also the state that recorded one of the highest incidences of rape of Dalit women in 2019. The state recorded around 547 incidences of rape of Dalit women in 2019.
However, other states which recorded similar number of rape cases on Dalit women were Rajasthan which recorded over 559 cases of rape of Dalit women, followed by states like Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra and Haryana which recorded 510, 377, 210 cases respectively.