Capital Crime: Rape Tripled, Kidnapping of Women Doubled in Delhi in Last 10 Years, Says Police Data

It was in December 2012 when the chilling Nirbhaya case took place in the national capital. That year, the city had reported 706 rape cases. In 10 years, the cases of rape in Delhi have nearly tripled​ as the city reported 2,076 such crimes in 2021, official data from the Delhi police shows. Not just rape but cases of assault on women to ‘outraging their modesty’ were also up by over 3.5 times between 2012 and 2021, Delhi police data analysed by CNN-News18 shows.

The city had reported more than 2,100 cases of rapes each year between 2014 and 2019. In 2020, when the country witnessed the nationwide lockdown due to the novel coronavirus, the city reported 1,699 cases. In 2021, the number increased by more than 22 per cent to 2,076 cases.

Further, kidnapping of women has also nearly doubled from 2,048 cases in 2012 to 3,758 in 2021. Cases of cruelty by the husband or his relatives have gone up from 2,046 to 4,731 during the same period.

Not just crimes against women, but the city has also recorded an overall jump in heinous offences – from 2,402 cases registered in 2012 to 5,740 such cases during 2021, the data available on the Delhi police’s website shows. From 608 cases of robbery in 2012, the capital’s case count under the category has jumped to 2,333 in 2021.

While most of the categories have reported a rise, cases under certain heads have dropped as well. The cases of dacoity have dipped from 28 to 26 while those of murder have fallen from 521 to 459 between 2012 and 2021. Down from 79 cases of riots in 2012, the year 2021 recorded 68 such cases.

Non-heinous crime in the city jumped by over 5.5 times – from nearly 52,000 cases in 2012 to over 2.87 lakh cases last year. Cases of motor vehicle theft were just 14,391 in 2012. In 2021, this increased to 37,910. Cases of house theft have jumped from 1,746 in 2012 to 2,485 in 2021.

Delhi has been called the ‘crime capital’ of India. According to the data released by the National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB), however, the number of cases registered under the Indian Penal Code (IPC) in the city plummeted by 18 per cent between 2019 and 2020.

Further, despite an overall dip in the crime rate in Delhi in 2020 due to the pandemic-induced lockdown, the national capital, though, reported the highest number of violent crimes and crimes against women among all the metropolitan cities of the country.

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