New Delhi: The Yogi Adityanath-led BJP government in Uttar Pradesh, which first came to power in 2017, has long claimed that it has stamped out organised crime in the state.
But government data analysed by ThePrint reveals that gun-related violence in UP has risen steadily since 2017, and is now at the highest level in India.
The state has recently been in the news for the brazen shooting of gangster-turned-politician Atiq Ahmad and his brother Khalid Azeem alias Ashraf while they were surrounded by policemen in Prayagraj. The duo was shot dead by three persons with foreign-made arms.
In his first speech after the killing, CM Adityanath said, “riots don’t happen (here in UP) and no mafia can threaten anyone. There is proper law and order”.
However, data from the National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB), the apex agency responsible for collating crime statistics in the country, draws a more complex picture.
According to the data, Uttar Pradesh reported 36,363 cases in 2021 under the Arms Act, 1959 — the law that regulates the supply of illegal weapons and violence emerging thereof.
Even when adjusted for population, the state ranks highest when it comes to gun violence.
With a population of 23 crore (as estimated by the NCRB), the number of cases registered under the Arms Act in Uttar Pradesh comes to about 15.7 per lakh people — three times more than the national average of 5.4 in 2021.
This number is the crime rate, calculated per one lakh population.
On par with Uttar Pradesh in 2021 was neighbour Madhya Pradesh, which reported a gun violence crime rate of 15.6, barely a notch below UP’s.
Prior to 2021, Madhya Pradesh was topping the charts in cases registered under the Arms Act.
NCRB data further shows that the gun violence trend in UP has been moving upwards since 2017. While in 2016, the arms offences crime rate in UP was around 12, it jumped to 13 in 2018, then to around 14 in 2019, touching almost 16 by 2021.
The other states that have reported a gun violence crime rate higher than the national average are Haryana and Rajasthan.
A note of caution while reading these numbers: NCRB statistics are based on the crimes reported, so a crime that was committed but not reported to the authorities doesn’t find place in the statistics.
Also read: ‘It was over in 30 seconds’ — eyewitnesses recall fatal attack on Atiq Ahmed, Ashraf in Prayagraj
District-wise gun violence in Uttar Pradesh
District-wise data for the year 2021 shows that when it comes to gun violence, western UP has the highest crime rate.
Since the NCRB only provided state-wise data on the basis of mid-year population projections for 2021, ThePrint calculated the district-wise crime rate for UP using the population data from Census 2011. To arrive at the district-wise gun violence crime rate, the Arms Act cases for each district were divided by Census 2011 population data.
In western UP, barring a few districts, most were observed to have a gun violence rate of above 20 per lakh population.
However, such cases were also reported aplenty in pockets of eastern UP — particularly Shravasti (163), Gonda (53), Sant Kabir Nagar (88), Bhadohi (70), Pratapgarh (43) and Ghazipur (33).
Most of the remaining districts in eastern and central UP reported less than 20 cases per lakh population.
Gang rivalry, kidnapping and abduction
Uttar Pradesh is also on the top when it comes to murders resulting from “gang rivalry”.
In 2021, the state reported about 42 cases of murders where the motive was recorded as “gang rivalry”, which is about two-thirds of the total number of such cases (65) reported in India that year.
In 2017, Uttar Pradesh had reported around 27 such murders — a little over a third of all “gang rivalry” murders reported in India that year (74).
“Gang rivalry” is a relatively newer feature in NCRB reports, which is why statistics are not available for the same in its reports published prior to 2017.
Cases of kidnapping and abduction peaked in UP in 2018 when it reported its highest kidnapping tally. Pegged to its mid-year population that year, the crime rate under this subhead was 10 — which means that for every 1 lakh people, the state reported at least 10 cases of kidnapping and abduction.
Since 2018, this rate has moved downwards in UP and had reached 6.3 by 2021. The crime rate of kidnapping and abduction in the state has also been lower than the national average since 2019.
Violent crimes
Despite an increase in reporting of arms and related cases, the rate of all violent crimes —from rape to dacoity and murder — in UP has been lower than India’s.
Violent crimes peaked in the state in 2016, when it reported around 30 such crimes per 1 lakh population, which was still below the national average of 33 that year.
The crime rate has dipped gradually since then, reaching 22.7 in 2021 against the national average of 30.2 in the same year.
(Edited by Nida Fatima Siddiqui)
Also read: Yogi Adityanath said ‘gunda raj’ over and people bought it. But UP crime still the worst