New Delhi: Most “women’s safety” discussions in India centre on the dangers of sexual assault, harassment, and other crimes in public spaces. Much is also said about the perils of being unmarried and having a boyfriend, especially in the wake of the high-profile Shraddha Walkar and Nikki Yadav cases. Crime data, however, also tells another chilling but often-overlooked story.
According to an analysis of National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) data, conducted by the Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation (MoSPI), nearly one in every three reported crimes against a woman from 2016 to 2021 pertained to the “cruelty” of her husband and/or his relatives.
The findings, published in MoSPI’s ‘Women and Men in India 2022’ report, released earlier this month, show that cruelty by husbands and their relatives is the most commonly reported form of violence against women in India.
In the six-year span from 2016 to 2021, nearly 22.8 lakh crimes against women were recorded in India. Of these, about 7 lakh, or 30 per cent, were reported under Section 498A of the Indian Penal Code (IPC), the report says.
Section 498A pertains to cruelty by a husband or his relatives against a woman. It defines “cruelty” as any wilful conduct that “is likely to drive the woman to commit suicide or to cause grave injury or danger to life, limb or health (whether mental or physical)”.
Also counted as cruelty is “harassment of the woman… with a view to coercing her or any person related to her to meet any unlawful demand for any property or valuable security or is on account of failure by her or any person related to her to meet such demand”.
Upon conviction, the accused can be jailed for up to three years and also become liable for a fine.
The data in the MoSPI report shows that in each of the six years studied, cases registered under 498A topped all other crimes against women, outnumbering the cases reported for rape and sexual harassment.
To provide further context, during the same time period of 2016-2021, India reported 5.2 lakh cases under Section 354 of the IPC, which refers to ‘assault on women with intent to outrage her modesty’ and accounted for an average of approximately 23 per cent of all crimes against women.
The next most common crime against women was kidnapping and abduction, which accounted for an average of 18 per cent of cases, with 4.14 lakh reported incidents. In the same six-year period, India reported about 1.96 lakh rape cases, accounting for approximately 8.6 per cent of the total crimes against women in 2016-2021.
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Assam, Telangana, Delhi ‘worst’ for wives, Goa ‘best’
The MoSPI report shed light on the incidence of different crimes against women across India for the year 2021.
The crime rate for each state and UT that year was calculated by dividing the number of crimes committed by the mid-year projected population of women.
In several states, the crime rate — or cruelty cases per 1 lakh women — was more than 40.
In the crime rate calculated for 498A cases, Assam topped the chart. The state reported around 13,000 cases under 498A in 2021, which translates to 75 reported cases per 1 lakh female population in the state.
Assam was followed by Telangana (50.4), Delhi (48.9), Rajasthan (43.8), West Bengal (41.5), and Haryana (41.3)
Goa was the ‘best’ in this regard, with barely one case under 498A reported for every 10 lakh women. The crime rate here was just 0.1 per cent.
‘Tip of the iceberg’
Statistics reveal only the “tip of the iceberg” since many crimes are never reported, cautioned Professor K. Jaishankar, principal director, International Institute of Crime and Security Sciences (IICSS), Bengaluru, speaking to ThePrint.
“There are many hidden crimes that won’t get reported for various reasons, including caste, culture, patriarchy, fear of police and society etc. A holistic crime victimisation survey by an independent think tank or an academic body is the need of the hour,” he said.
On the apparent prevalence of domestic violence against women, he added: “It’s the duty of families and societies to teach their male children to respect women and vice versa. Societies need to rethink how they view marriage so as to prevent crimes against women within families.”
As reported earlier by ThePrint, 21,570 women died by suicide for marriage-related reasons between 2016 and 2020, while the number for men was 16,021. In the same period, dowry was a cause of suicide for 9,385 women, which works out to 1,877 per year or five women each day.
(Edited by Asavari Singh)
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