Does NCRB crime data present an accurate picture of crime on ground? ﻿
Sai Krishna Muthyanolla
November 15, 2019
In part 2 of this series, we look at various categories of violent crime and crime against women to understand the large variance in certain states. This is to explore if NCRB data presents an accurate picture of the crime on ground?
Inthe first
part of this series,  we explored the overall state of the crimesacross the different states in India. Apart from numbers at a higher level, wealso tried to drill down further and understand the data based on theclassification of the crimes reported with a focus on the state of violentcrimes committed across the different states/UTs in India.
Inthis story, we look at further break down of the different types of crimesunder violent crimes, and also look into other crimes being committed whichmight not necessarily get reported and hence be a part of the NCRB data. Inother words, we also look into crime reporting in India and the scope ofinconsistencies in the same.
Kidnapping
& Abduction along with Grievous Hurt and Rioting account for bulk of the
Violent Crimes
NCRB’s
CII (Crime in India) report -2017, statesthat a total of 4,26,825 cases were recorded as violent crimes in 2017. Thereport further segregates the violent crimes under 15 different heads as perdifferent sections of the Indian Penal Code (IPC).
95,893cases were recorded under the head ‘Kidnapping and Abduction’ under IPCsections 363-369.Crimes under the head ‘Grievous
hurt’ have the second highest cases of recorded crimes acrossthe country with 93,316 cases.
58,880cases were reported under Rioting
(IPC Sections 147-151 & I53 A), with acaveat that all the rioting cases were included irrespective of whether theyresulted in any injuries or body harm. Earlier, Factly did a story in respect to riots and communal incidents in India.
51,621cases of ‘Attempt to Commit Murder’ and 28,653 cases of ‘Murder’ were recordedacross the states/UTs in 2017. NCRB data also shows that there were 32,559cases of rape.
Uttar
Pradesh, Bihar and West Bengal with highest incidence of top four Violent
crimes
Asnoted earlier, the head ‘Kidnapping and Abduction’ has the highest number ofrecorded crimes under violent crimes. Uttar Pradesh is the state with thehighest number of crimes under this head with 19,921 recorded cases.Maharashtra recorded 10,324 cases while Bihar recorded 8,479 cases of ‘Kidnappingand Abduction’.
Whilethese three states are among the states with the highest population, Delhi andAssam which have relatively lower total population, also recorded a high numberof crimes under this head with 6,095 and 7,857 recorded cases respectively.
WestBengal recorded the highest number of crimes under the head ‘grievous hurt’with 21,828 cases followed by Bihar and Uttar Pradesh with 12,867 and 11,508cases respectively. Assam recorded a significantly higher number of casescompared to the size of its population with 10,397 cases even under this head.
Bihar,Uttar Pradesh and Maharashtra top the list of states with the highest number ofcrimes reported under the head ‘Rioting’.
Biharrecorded a high number of crimes even for ‘Attempt to commit murder’ with 9,585cases. Uttar Pradesh has comparatively lower number of cases under thiscategory with 4,939. West Bengal tops the list with 11,710 cases of ‘Attempt tocommit murder’ recorded in 2017 as per NCRB data.
Keralaand Tamil Nadu which are among the states with the overall highest number of recordedcrimes have significantly lesser numbers in these top 4 heads for violentcrimes. Especially, Kerala has lesser number of crimes recorded with theexception of Rioting.
UP
has a higher incidence recorded crimes under Murder, Rape and Robbery
UttarPradesh and Bihar and West Bengal also lead in the yet another head of violentcrimes i.e. ‘Murder’.  A total of 4,324 murdercases in UP and 2,803 & 2,001 in Bihar and West Bengal respectively wererecorded in 2017.  On the other hand, Keralahas only 305 recorded murder cases with Delhi being the other state with lessernumber of cases for murder.
MadhyaPradesh, UP and Rajasthan have a higher incidence of rape cases recorded forthe year 2017. Kerala recorded 2003 cases of rape, which is higher compared tothe other heads under violent crimes. Assam, Delhi and Haryana have highercases registered under this category from an overall population perspective. Biharand West Bengal which are among the leading states for most of the violentcrimes have  fewer number of recordedrape cases with 605 and 1,084 cases respectively.
‘Robbery’accounted for 7 highest number of cases recorded under violentcrimes. Nearly 1/5 of the total cases under this head are fromMaharashtra with 6,451 cases, followed by UP and Delhi. West Bengal recordedonly 369 robbery cases compared to its numbers under other heads of violentcrimes.
More
cases of Crime against Women recorded in Assam and Delhi while Bihar records
relatively fewer such cases
Rapeis one of the prominent violent crimes recorded in the NCRB data. In additionto the data on cases of rape, NCRB’s CII report-2017, furnishes data relatingto the various crimes
committed against women. The data included crimescommitted under different sections of IPC and various SLLs. Few of thecategories of crimes committed against woman includes – Rape, Murder with Rape,Dowry deaths, Acid Attacks, Cruelty by Husband/his relatives, Kidnapping andabduction of women, Insult to modest of Women etc.
UttarPradesh has the highest number of recorded cases of crime against women with56,011 cases. Maharashtra and West Bengal rank second and third followed byMadhya Pradesh and Rajasthan. Bihar, which as noted earlier was leading in mostof the violent crimes has comparatively fewer number of recorded crimes againstwomen with 14,711 cases.
Assamrecorded comparatively a greater number of recorded crimes against women with23,082 cases. This is more evident when the rate of crime is considered. Rateof incidence of crime here is defined as number of cases per 1,00,000 women.The population is considered by extrapolating 2001 census data of womenpopulation to mid 2017. Assam has the highest rate of crimes committed againstwomen in India with 143.6 crimes per one lakh women. Delhi stands next with133.3 while the states of Telangana and Odisha are among the states with higherrate of crimes with 94.7 and 94.5 cases per one lakh women.  Kerala which has 11,057 cases of crimesagainst women in 2017 recorded a rate of 60.2 cases per one lakh women.
UttarPradesh, West Bengal and Maharashtra which were the states with the highestnumber of cases, have a moderate rate of 53.2, 67.3 and 55 cases per one lakhwomen respectively. The lower reported incidence of crime against women inBihar becomes more conspicuous with the rate being 28.8, among the lowest inthe country. Nagaland records the lowest rate of crimes against women with 6.9cases per one lakh women.
Bihar
and U.P have lower rates of reported crimes against women.
NCRB’sCII-2017 report segregates the crimes against women into different categories.This offers more insights into the numbers relating each of the specificcrimes.
Itwas already observed that in the case of Uttar Pradesh, even though the numberof recorded crimes against women is the highest, the rate of crime is moderate.When the rate of crime is further broken down into the various heads, we couldsee the rate of cases in respect to Rape is 4 per one lakh women, attempt tocommit rape as 0.6 and abetment to suicide as 0.3 per one lakh women. On theother hand, the rate of Dowry deaths, cruelty by Husband/relatives, kidnappingetc. have higher rates compared to other states.
Biharalso has a similar trend where in rate of dowry deaths and Kidnapping are amongthe highest in the country, while it is among the lowest for other categories.
Assamhas higher rates of crime against women in most of the categories, esp. with avery high rate of crimes reported under ‘cruelty by husband or his relatives’.
Stateslike Kerala, Tamil Nadu do not have much variance in comparison to theirstanding among other states across the different categories of crime againstwomen.
Odishahas a significantly higher rate under ‘assault on women with intent to outrageher modesty’ with 42.9 cases per lakh women.
Thetwo Telugu states of Andhra Pradesh and Telangana have higher rates under ‘abetmentto suicide’ and  ‘cruelty by husband orhis relatives’ compared to most other states.
Huge
variance in the way different types of crimes are reported across various
states.
Inour earlier stories regarding NCRB data, we have highlighted the issues withthe data provided by NCRB. One of the key
limitations is that these numbers are dependent on FIRs beingfiled or only police recorded crimes. There could be instances, like in case ofcommunal riots data wherein, when alternate data is available and compared the NCRB’s CII report does notaccount for all the incidents.
Thisleads to apprehensions on a crime being reported and FIR being filed , in-spiteof an advisory from Ministry of Home affairs (MHA) to register all complaints withoutdiscrimination. A study conducted by TISS (Tata Institute of Social Sciences)and sponsored by Bureau of Police Research and Development (BPRD) of theGovernment of India, titled ‘A Study on Non-Registration of
Crimes: Problems & Solutions’ , throwssome light on the problems in reporting and registration of a crime. This studywas a qualitative and quantitative study with data being collected from six states across the country.
Thereport identified the following as potential reasons for under reporting of crime.
TheNCRB’s crime statistics show a correlation with these problems identified inunder reporting. For example, in Bihar and UP, the cases resulting in death (dowry)and abduction have higher rates while cases like assault on women, attempt tocommit rape or rape etc. have comparatively lesser rates. This could mean thatcrimes which cannot be hidden(murder/death) or which has other partycomplaining (abduction) result in FIRs being filed but cases which can beinfluenced, or which have a stigma attached like attempt to rape etc. are beingunder reported. Even in cases relating to rape, the occurrence of rape has betterreporting compared to an attempt to rape.
It is also observed that in the case of states with better development indices like Kerala, there is less variance in their standing among the states for various categories of crime. These observations are not uniform and there could be many other factors which influence the reporting of a crime across different states. Only a thorough study to identify such problems and implementation of remedial measures could result in better crime data for India.
Featured Image: Violent Crimes in India