Context: According to a National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) report, there was a 28% increase in the registration of cases in 2020, primarily owing to the violations of COVID-19 norms across India.

Key Findings

• An almost 21-fold jump was recorded in cases of disobedience to the order duly promulgated by public servant, and over four times in cases involving violations of other State local laws.
• Crimes against Scheduled Castes, with a total of 50,291 cases, showed an increase of 9.4%. Simple hurt with 32.9% formed the largest chunk, followed by cases under the SC/ST (Prevention of Atrocities) Act with 8.5% and cases under criminal intimidation with 7.5%.
• The cases of sedition declined from 93 in 2019 to 73 last year, with Manipur reporting 15, Assam 12, Karnataka eight, Uttar Pradesh seven, Haryana six, Delhi five and Kashmir two.
• Crime rate registered per lakh population has increased from 385.5 in 2019 to 487.8 in 2020.
• As the country remained under complete lockdown from March 25 to May 31 last year during the first wave of COVID-19, cases of crime against women, children and senior citizens, theft, burglary, robbery and dacoity declined.
• Cases of murder showed a marginal increase of 1% to 29,193. There was a 8.30% decline in cases of crime against women.

Environment-related offences

• Cases under the ‘environment-related offences’ category increased by 78.1 per cent in the country in 2020.
• This is one of the highest increases in cases in various crime categories, excluding the offences related to the novel coronavirus disease (COVID-19) regulations and norms in 2020.
• Environment-related offences include violations of the Forest Act, the Forest Conservation Act, the Wild Life (Protection) Act, The Environmental (Protection) Act, the Air & the Water (Prevention & Control of Pollution) Act, the Cigarette and Other Tobacco Products Act, Noise Pollution Acts and the National Green Tribunal Act.
• Tamil Nadu reported the country’s highest number of environment-related crimes. Rajasthan came second among the states.
• Four-fifths of the environment-related crimes were registered under the Cigarette and Other Tobacco Products Act, 80.5 per cent of total environment-related cases in 2020.
• Violations of noise pollution control laws of both the Union and state governments formed the second-highest number of environment-related cases. These violations accounted for 11.8 per cent of the total cases.

By: Shubham Tiwari