Capital is most unsafe city for women: NCRB '20 data
New Delhi: Posing a further challenge to an area of concern for the national apital since several years, Delhi has secured the top rank in the number of cases of crimes against women among other metropolitan cities with as many as 9,782 cases being registered in 2020 amid the Covid pandemic, the latest NCRB data for the pandemic year showed.
And as almost all crime in the city has reduced significantly in comparison to the year before (2019), owing to the pandemic and the nationwide lockdown, so have cases of crimes against women but the numbers still show the Capital reporting the highest number of such crimes among 19 other cities.
Compared to 2019, the number has seen a decrease of 24 per cent. In 2019, 12,902 cases were reported while in 2018 the number was pegged at around 11,724. And despite the pandemic, Delhi has come out on top with respect to crimes against women.
Moreover, the number of cases of rape (Section 376 of IPC) ranked the highest in Delhi among other metro cities with 967 cases in 2020 alone. Incidents of dowry deaths too were the highest in Delhi with 109 cases registered, the data, released late on Tuesday, showed.
The data further showed that total incidents of kidnapping and abduction of women went up to 2,779 in 2020 while incidents of Insult to the Modesty of Women (Section 509 of IPC) were found to be the second-highest in Delhi with 401 such incidents registered.
In cases registered under the Protection of Children from Sexual Offence (POCSO) Act too, Delhi ranked the highest among 19 other cities in its population category with 1,088 such cases being witnessed in 2020.
For incidents of assault on women, 938 cases related to such incidents were registered, ranking the highest. However, in stalking cases, Delhi came in third with 267 reported cases, just behind Mumbai and Hyderabad.
Significantly, in data released by the Delhi Police earlier this year for the first six months of 2020, rape cases had dramatically shot up by 43 per cent in the capital (compared to the first six months of 2019) with 833 cases being registered between January 1 and June 15 alone.
Moreover, as many as 1,712 cases of cruelty by husband and in-laws and 56 cases of dowry deaths had been registered in the 6-month period while more than 1,000 cases of molestation and assault of women were also lodged.
For crimes registered under section 498A of IPC which pertains to cruelty by the husband of his relatives, Delhi had the highest number of cases with a total of 2,356 such cases being registered in 2020.
A senior Delhi Police officer said that the city police force encourages registration of FIRs by aggrieved persons and pointed at that as one of the possible reasons for such numbers being reported.
