New Delhi: The maximum cases of atrocities against Scheduled Castes were registered in the Hindi heartland in 2021, with Uttar Pradesh coming first. Rajasthan and Madhya Pradesh came a close second and third.
These three states alone accounted for 55 percent of cases registered under “Atrocities/crimes against Scheduled Castes”, according to National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) data released by the central government.
In India around 50,900 cases were registered in 2021, an increase of 1.2 percent from 2020.
In terms of “Crimes against Scheduled Tribes”, an increase of 6.4 percent was recorded, taking the number of cases to 8,802 in India.
Cases of “Crimes/Atrocities against Scheduled Castes (SCs)” in metropolitan cities saw a significant rise. While registered cases for such crimes against Scheduled Castes increased by 18.6 percent, cases of crimes against Scheduled Tribes (STs) increased by 19.5 percent in 2021.
In Union Territories, cases of crimes against SCs increased by 75 percent. And, cases of crime against STs increased by 300% from four to twelve in 2021.
In cities, rapes formed the highest percentage of crimes against Scheduled Tribes, accounting for 18.6 percent in 2021.
Among the 19 metropolitan cities, Jaipur once again regained the top position in terms of maximum cases of “Crime/Atrocities against Scheduled Castes”. For those against Scheduled Tribes, Jaipur fared even worse. It accounted for 58 percent of all cases in metropolitan cities against STs.
Among the seven sisters in the North East, barring Assam, the others saw a total of one case against STs and three against SCs.
Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan are the top two states respectively in crimes against Scheduled Castes. They are followed by Odisha.
After registering no cases in 2019 and 2020, Jammu and Kashmir saw its first offence in the ST category in 2021.
According to the NCRB report, “Crime head-wise cases revealed that simple hurt with 30.4% (15,485 cases) formed the largest chunk of cases of crimes/atrocities against Scheduled Castes (SCs) during 2021” and the trend remained similar for Scheduled Tribes as well.
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