In 2012, on the cold and dark night of December 16, the news of the gang rape of a young woman in a moving bus in the national capital shook the nation. The rape was brutal and the woman, christened Nirbhaya, died on December 29, 2012.
The incident was so impactful that it pushed for a series of policy changes to make the county, in general, and particularly Delhi safer for women. But the rape cases and crimes against women reported in the country as well as Delhi tell otherwise.
News18 analysed the annual report from the National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) on crimes in India which shows that there has been no decline in rape cases in the national capital when compared to 2012.
In 2012, the city reported 706 rape cases. The number of cases kept increasing until 2017. Between 2017 and 2022, the rape cases reported in Delhi stood below 1,300, with 2020 being an exception when less than 1,000 cases were reported. So, roughly about three to four rape cases have been reported in Delhi every day on an average in the last few years.
Across India, the number of rape cases reported in 2022 registered a marginal drop from 2021. But it is higher than the number of rape cases registered in the county about 10 years ago.
In 2012, India reported 24,923 rape cases but since then, the country has been reporting more than 30,000 cases each year. The year 2020 was an exception when the country saw nationwide lockdown due to coronavirus and the rape cases dropped below 30,000 for the first time since 2012. The highest number of rape cases were registered in 2016 (38,947) – a record so far.
LOW CONVICTION RATE
While there are a number of strict laws, the low conviction rate paints a grim picture.
Except for 2017 and 2020, the rape conviction rate in India was below 30—that is, of 100 accused, less than 30 get convicted during a year.
In 2009, India’s rape conviction rate was 26.9 per cent and for the next couple of years, it remained below 27 per cent. Post-2013, this started increasing in small numbers. The peak was in 2020 when the conviction rate was almost 40 per cent.
In 2016, India had 1.52 lakh rape cases for trial, including 4,849 gang rapes. Of the total rapes, there were convictions in 4,739 cases, while 13,813 cases saw acquittals or were discharged. The year ended with 1.33 lakh cases pending trial. The conviction rate of rape cases in India during 2016 was 25.5 per cent, while the pendency rate was 87.7 per cent. The pendency percentage is the number of cases pending trial at the end of the year of the total cases for trial.
In 2022, there were 1.71 lakh pending rape cases while 26,508 cases were added during the year. In 2022, only 5,067 accused were convicted while 12,062 acquitted. At the end of the year, 1.78 lakh rape cases were still pending. The conviction rate of rape cases in India during 2022 was 27.4 while the pendency rate was 90 per cent.
Rise in crimes against women
Among metropolitan cities, Delhi has been reporting the highest number of rape cases. In 2022, the metropolitan cities mentioned in the report registered 3,633 rape cases. Delhi, with 1,204 rape cases, was at the top position followed by Jaipur with 497 cases.
Post 2014, the NCRB report had a dedicated section for crime in metropolitan cities. The 19 cities in the list are: Delhi, Jaipur, Mumbai, Ahmedabad, Lucknow, Bengaluru, Chennai, Coimbatore, Ghaziabad, Hyderabad, Indore, Kanpur, Kochi, Kolkata, Kozhikode, Nagpur, Pune, Patna and Surat. These 19 cities have over 20 lakh population.
In 2014, Delhi reported about 36 crimes against women per day on an average. This has increased to about 39 in 2022.
After more than seven years of the Nirbhaya rape incident, in March 2020, four men convicted for the brutal assault were hanged at Delhi’s Tihar Jail.
There were a total of six accused in the gang rape of Nirbhaya. While one of these was a juvenile and was convicted by the juvenile justice board, another accused died by suicide in jail.
Source: News18