It took over 15 years to bring Dera chief Gurmeet Ram Rahim to justice after rape charges against the ‘rockstar baba’ first came to light. While the sluggish pace can be justified where the rich and powerful are involved, the overall conviction rate in rape cases hasn’t really improved in the last 16 years.
The number of registered rape cases has more than doubled from 2001 to 2016. So is the case with the number of overall reported crimes against women.
The number of registered rape cases in India has gone up from 16,075 in 2001 to 38,891 in 2016. There was an almost 35 per cent jump in the number of registered rape cases in 2013, the year after the Nirbhaya incident.
This is the highest ever increase in the number of such cases. Since 2013, the number of registered rape cases has been more than 30,000 in each year.
Highest Increase Rate of Rape Cases Filed
In 2010, only seven states registered more than 1,000 rape cases each. This number has gone up to 15 in 2015.
All through, Madhya Pradesh has been registering the most rape cases in each of the years. In 2014, more than 5,000 rape cases were registered in Madhya Pradesh, the only such occasion in the country.
On the other hand, the conviction rate in cases of rape hasn’t really changed in the last 16 years. While it was 26 per cent in 2001, it is down to 25.5 per cent in 2016. Conviction rate refers to the percentage of cases that resulted in conviction out of the total cases in which trials are over.
From 2013, the year after the Nirbhaya incident, to 2015, the conviction rate in rape cases had steadily increased to 29.4 percent only to fall back to 25.5 percent in 2016.
Among the states with more than 1,000 registered cases of rape, only Uttar Pradesh had a consistent conviction rate of more than 50%. West Bengal & Andhra Pradesh have had lower conviction rates all through. In Haryana, the conviction rate has been more or less constant at 25%.
The total number of registered cases of crime against women increased from about 1.43 lakh in 2001 to more than 3.5 lakh in 2016.
498A Accounts for One-Third of Registered Cases
Almost 1/3rd of these cases are related to 498A (cruelty by husband or relatives). Together with 498A, assault & kidnapping cases occupy the top three places in terms of the number of cases of crime registered against women.
If cases of rape are included, these four account for more than 80 percent of the registered cases of crime against women.
The cases related to 498A have increased from 49,170 in 2001 to 1,10,477 in 2016. On the other hand, kidnapping cases have more than quadrupled in these 16 years, from 14,645 in 2001 to 64,618 in 2016.
The overall conviction rate of crimes against women has seen a consistent decline. From 27.8 percent in 2010, the conviction rate is down to 19 percent in 2016. This is much less than the average conviction rate of all IPC crimes which is consistently more than 40 percent. One of the prime reasons is the lower conviction rate in 498A cases as reported by Factly earlier.
(This story was originally published by Factly.in and has been republished here with permission)
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