Recently, National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) released the Crime in India Report 2020.

•While 2020, a year marked by months of a national lockdown due to the pandemic saw fewer traditional crimes such as those committed against women and children, among others, it witnessed a big spike in civil conflicts.

Key Points

     Riots (Civil Conflicts):

• Communal riots registered an increase of 96% in 2020 over the previous year.

• Delhi Police alone registered the highest i.e. 520 cases of communal riots in the year and Uttar Pradesh (UP) did not record a single case of communal violence in 2020.

• Caste riots saw an increase of close to 50%, agrarian riots 38% and riots during ‘andolan/morcha’ increased by 33%.

• Traditional Crimes:

• The number of cases registered for crimes against women, children and senior citizens, theft, burglary, robbery and dacoity, among others, dropped by about 2 lakh.

• Murder registered a marginal increase of 1% even as offences falling under the category of “violent crimes” decreased by 0.5%.

• Delhi is the most unsafe city for women. More than 10,093 cases of crimes against women were registered in the capital in 2020.

       Environment Related Offences:

• Cases under the ‘environment-related offences’ category increased by 78.1% in the country in 2020.

      Cyber Crime:

• The rate of cyber crime (incidents per lakh population) also increased from 3.3% in 2019 to 3.7% in 2020

     Offences Against State:

• The year also saw a significant drop in cases related to Offences against the State, with a drop of 27% over 2019.

UP, however, was the only major state to record an increase in this category, mostly due to the large number of ‘Damage to Public Property’ cases registered by the state, many of them during the anti- CAA (Citizenship (Amendment) Act, 2019) protests.

National Crime Records Bureau

•NCRB, headquartered in New Delhi, was set-up in 1986 under the Ministry of Home Affairs to function as a repository of information on crime and criminals so as to assist the investigators in linking crime to the perpetrators.