Be it Manipur or West Bengal, crime against women is on the rise across India and this is evident from a report on related complaints registered in 2022. Published by the National Commission for Women, it stated that there were 30,957 complaints of crime against women last year.
The NCW’s Statistical Overview of Complaints showed a 30 percent increase in the total number of complaints registered from 23,700 cases in 2021. After 2014, when it received 33,906 complaints, the NCW has received the highest number of complaints in 2022.
Half of these complaints – 16,872 cases, which is 54.5 percent – were from the country’s most populated state Uttar Pradesh (UP), followed by Delhi with 3,004 complaints (10 percent), Maharashtra with 1,381 complaints (5 percent), Bihar with 1,368 complaints (4.4 percent), Haryana with 1,362 complaints (4.4 percent), Madhya Pradesh with 1,141 complaints (3.7 percent), Rajasthan with 1,030 (3.3 percent), Tamil Nadu with 668 (2.2 percent), West Bengal with 621 (2 percent), Karnataka with 554 (1.8 percent) and the remaining states with 2,955 complaints (9.5 percent).
The NCW report said most of these complaints were about emotional abuse and domestic violence. A total of 9,710 complaints were registered under the ‘right to live with dignity (emotional abuse)’ category, 6,970 were under the ‘protection of women against domestic violence’ and 4,600 complaints were under the ‘harassment of married women/dowry harassment’. Most complaints from Uttar Pradesh were about domestic violence and emotional abuse.
The NCW registered over 2,500 complaints under the ‘outraging modesty of a woman or molestation’ category, while 1,701 complaints were lodged under ‘rape/attempt to rape’, 1,623 complaints under the ‘police apathy against women’ and 924 complaints under ‘cyber crimes’.
In response to a question in Lok Sabha, women and child development minister Smriti Irani presented data of 357 complaints under ‘harassment of married women/dowry harassment’ in 2022, 341 in 2021, and 330 in 2020; whereas 1,710 complaints in 2022, 1,681 in 2021, and 1,236 in 2020 were registered under the ‘rape/attempt to rape’. “There is an increase in the number of complaints registered in the commission under categories ‘dowry’ and ‘rape or attempt to rape’ in the last three years and this year,” the union minister said in her reply.
According to the minister’s data, 764 fast-track special courts, including 411 e-POCSO courts were functional in 28 states and union territories (UT) as of January 2023. The courts disposed of more than 1,44,000 complaints but there are more than 1,98,000 pending cases, too, as of December 2022.
About the 2021 report, NCW chief Rekha Sharma said, “The commission has always made it a point to launch new initiatives to help women.” The number of complaints are increasing because the commission is raising awareness among women so that they can lodge a complaint, she said.
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