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http://ncrb.nic.in/CD-CII2012/Additional_Tables_CII_2012/Additional Tables.htm
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India officially undercounts all crimes including rape
The National Crime Records Bureau, India’s official source of crime data, is systematically undercounting virtually every crime in India on account of a statistical shortcoming, The Hindu has learnt.
The NCRB, under the union Home ministry, compiles its annual ‘Crime in India’ publication based on data that comes to it from state crime records bureaus, which in turn get their data from the First Information Reports (FIRs) filed with every police station in that State. What few know, however, is that the data published by the NCRB only takes into account the ‘principal offence’ in every FIR, that is, the charge that attracts the maximum penalty, a fact confirmed to The Hindu by R. Rajasekaran, deputy director of the NCRB. In the case of a rape-and- murder, such as the December 16 Delhi case, the ‘principal offence’ is murder since it attracts a maximum penalty of death. As a result, rapes that end in murder are recorded only as murders in NCRB’s statistics. “We are trying to improve our system. New editions could include categories like ‘rape-and- murder’ and ‘attempt to rape’,” Mr. Rajasekaran said.
This statistical shortcoming, however, extends beyond rapes-and-murders to virtually all crimes short of murder. Since a typical FIR contains several charges, it is clear that the NCRB statistics are an under-counting of all crimes, but the extent of under-counting is impossible to estimate. Moreover, the four “disclaimers” and four “limitations” that the NCRB lists in its 2012 publication make no mention that the numbers are restricted to ‘principal offences’.
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Only 1% of sexual violence victims in India report crime: Lancet
Sexual violence affects as many as 27.5 million women in India, though only one per cent of the victims report the crime to police, says a report in the latest edition of British medical journal, The Lancet.
According to the report, rape incidents in India are receiving extensive media coverage in the aftermath of the December 16, 2012 gang rape and murder case and the recent gang rape of a young woman on the order of the village panchayat.
Low reporting of sexual violence might in part be because marital rape is not a crime in India, says the report. “Most sexual violence in India occurs in marriage with 10 per cent of married women reporting sexual violence from husbands,” says the report “Sexual Violence and Rape in India,” written by Anita Raj and Lotus McDougal.
Adolescent girls
“Adolescent wives are most vulnerable, reporting the highest number of marital sexual violence in any age group. Adolescent girls also account for 24 percent of rape cases in the country, although they represent only 9 percent of the total women population. An estimated 2·5 million adolescent girls [between 15 and 19 years] are victims of sexual violence in India,” it says.
Quoting National Crime Records Bureau data, the report suggests a rise in reporting of rape to police, particularly in 2013. “Past year, increases have been attributed to better support for victim disclosure, but actual rape incidence might be increasing.”
“The substantial number of gang rapes suggests a social and peer support for men perpetrating sexual violence in India. In view of youth involvement in rapes, young men might be particularly vulnerable to such negative peer influence,” it added.
