New Delhi: A woman travelling home, a doctor returning after duty, a passenger getting into an app cab. The 16-page document linked to posters across Lucknow recounts 16 cases of crimes against women. “Women are not safe in Lucknow,” read the posters, each carrying a QR code that takes readers to the document detailing these cases.
“Lucknow sirf imaaraton ka nahin, insaanon ka bhi shehar hai. Kya yahan mahilayen surakshit hain? (Lucknow is not just a city of buildings, but of people too. Are women safe here?),” the posters ask questions like these that recur throughout the PDF.
Put up at several busy locations in the city such as Hazratganj, Aishbagh, Lalbagh, Hussain Ganj, Chowk and Hussainabad, among other areas. A report suggests that similar posters were seen at more than 100 locations.
While their timing and message have led several reports to place them in the middle of the political poster war ahead of the 2027 Uttar Pradesh Assembly election, no official confirmation exists regarding the person or organisation behind this.
The QR code directs users to crime-related information based on National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) data, including figures for Lucknow and Gorakhpur.
Lucknow’s crime rate
There is a substantial body of official data behind these posters.
According to the latest NCRB data for 2024, Lucknow recorded 2,571 cases of crimes against women, involving 2,728 victims. Its crime rate was 186.3 cases per lakh women, the second-highest among the 19 Indian cities with populations above 20 lakh; Jaipur was higher at 199.6.
And that is not an isolated year.
The previous year, NCRB’s data positioned Lucknow’s crime rate against women at 209.9 per lakh population, with 2,902 cases.
There is also another side to the same official record.
Across UP, NCRB’s 2024 data showed declines in several major categories. Rape cases fell from 3,516 in 2023 to 3,209 in 2024, while dowry deaths fell from 2,122 to 1,047. Murders of women also declined from 702 to 668.
The state government and police have repeatedly pointed to such figures when arguing that law and order has improved.
“Today, Uttar Pradesh’s law and order has become a benchmark for the country. It has set an example, and everyone is talking about it,” Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath told the Uttar Pradesh Assembly in February 2025. He cited NCRB figures showing declines in several categories of crime since 2017.
The campaign takes individual cases, many of them violent and disturbing, and places them alongside a broader question about whether women feel safe in the city. Government figures, meanwhile, measure registered cases, rates and police action.
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The cases in the PDF include cases such as an assault on a woman during vehicle checking at Janeshwar Mishra Park in June 2018; harassment of a woman doctor in April 2018; the rape of a woman by an app-cab driver in December 2018; and an attempt to run over a young woman with a car in Hazratganj in February 2019.
In September 2019, a six-year-old girl was raped and murdered in Saadatganj.
The compilation also includes cases of assault following objections to sexual harassment, including an incident involving a woman and her 17-year-old son in Aishbagh in 2020 and an assault on a woman constable in Aliganj in 2021.
The timing is difficult to separate from UP’s emerging election campaign.
A day before the women-safety posters were reported, posters targeting Samajwadi Party chief Akhilesh Yadav appeared in Lucknow and other parts of UP. They carried photographs of former SP leader Atiq Ahmed, Mukhtar Ansari and Azam Khan and slogans including, “Akhilesh ke mafia, mafia ke Akhilesh.” The identity of those who put up those posters had also not been officially established.
(Edited by Saptak Datta)