Rise in India's crime graph by five per cent in 2010

New Delhi: Cases of crime under various categories in the country increased by about 5 per cent last year as compared to 2009, according to a publication of the National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB). Besides, road accidents alone claimed 1.33 lakh lives last year, an increase of 5.5 per cent over 2009 that saw 1.26 lakh deaths.

According to “Crime in India 2010,” a total of 22,24,831 crimes were reported under the Indian Penal Code as against 21,21,345 cases in 2009. Murder cases during the year (33,335) went up by 3 per cent against 32,369 cases in 2009.

Cases under the following heads showed an increasing trend — attempt to murder increased by 1.3 per cent, rape cases increased by 3.6 per cent, kidnapping and abduction cases increased by 13.5 per cent, robbery rose by 4.4 per cent, and dowry deaths went up marginally by 0.1 per cent.

Crime against women during 2010 (2,13,585) went up by 4.8 per cent compared to 2,03,804 cases recorded in 2009. Crime against children went up by 10.3 per cent (26,694) as against 24,201 cases in 2009. However, crime against the Scheduled Castes (SC) declined by 2.6 per cent in 2010 (32,712) compared to 33,594 cases in 2009. Those against the Scheduled Tribes (ST) during the last year was put at 5885 case, an increase of 8.5 per cent compared to 5425 cases in 2009.

As per another publication of NCRB, ‘Accidental Deaths and Suicides in India 2010,' as many as 3,84, 649 lives were lost in accidents in 2010. In 2009, this figure stood at 3,57,021 indicating an increase of 7.7 per cent in 2010. Road accidents claimed the lives of 1,33,938 pople last year, indicating a rise of 5.5 per cent compared to 1,26,896 deaths in 2009.

As many as 1,34,599 people committed suicide in 2010. Family problem was the major reason for such suicides (31,856), followed by illness (28,464). Of the total suicides reported, 44,535 people (33.1 per cent) consumed poison to commit suicide and 42,266 persons (31.4 per cent) committed suicide by hanging.

The 58th edition of “Crime In India – 2010” was released by Union Home Minister P. Chidambaram here on Thursday. The NCRB has been publishing such figures since 1953, informed N.K. Tripathi, Director-General of NCRB.

The publication is a compilation and analysis of crime statistics on various types of crimes which had taken place in that year. The report is widely referred to by policy makers, police personnel, researchers, NGOs and other stake holders.

The Bureau has also been annually bringing out publication on “Accidental Deaths and Suicides in India” since 1967 to analyse the loss of valuable human lives in various types of accidents, natural calamity and suicides.

The NCRB has digitised all the editions of both publications, which can be accessed from the website of NCRB (http://ncrb.gov.in).

The Bureau is also entrusted with the task of implementing CCTNS (Crime and Criminal Tracking Network and Systems), a mission-mode project of the Home Ministry under national e-Governance plan to connect all the 15000 police stations and 6000-odd higher police offices across the country. This project is likely to be rolled out by March 2012, the NCRB chief said.

Source: http://www.thehindu.com/news/national/rise-in-indias-crime-graph-by-five-per-cent-in-2010/article2576192.ece

Suryanelli verdict : justice overturned?

The Suryanelli case involved a 16-year-old girl who was allegedly sexually harassed and assaulted continuously for 40 days by 42 men in 1996. A special court convicted 36 accused during 2000-2, but the High Court of Kerala surprisingly overturned that verdict in January this year. M Suchitra reports. 

Recently, a two-member Division Bench of the Kerala High Court let off all but one of the 36 convicted by a lower court in the infamous Suryanelli sex racket case, shocking some citizens and taking many others by surprise. The case was about a 16-year-old girl was allegedly sexually harassed continuously for 40 days by 42 men, who were convicted on charges of abduction, conspiracy, illegal detention, rape and gang rape. Overturning an earlier verdict by a special court which convicted 36 of 42 accused, the High Court acquitted all the 36 individuals of the charges of rape and gang rape. It also reduced the sentence given by the trial court to the prime accused Advocate Dharmarajan from a rigorous life imprisonment to a mere five-year imprisonment.

Terming the verdict a perfect example for the gender insensitivity of the judiciary, various women’s organisations and human right groups have formed a common platform to protest against the verdict. “Taking into account the increasing incidents of sexual harassment and violence against women, the High Court’s verdict is a real let down,” points out K Ajitha, a prominent activist and president of Anweshi, a women’s counselling centre at Kozhikkode. A meeting of Kerala Sthree Vedi, an umbrella organisation of women’s groups in Kerala, held soon after the verdict, at Ernakulam has decided to take up the responsibility of filing appeal at the Supreme Court against the High Court verdict. Also, a defense committee has been formed for raising the finances for the case and for providing moral support to the victim and her family.

It was in January 1996 that the Suryanelli incident rocked the collective consciousness of the people of Kerala as well as the political realm. The prosecution's case is that as a result of a conspiracy hatched by the accused, the 16-year-old girl from Suryanelli, a remote village in Idukki district was enticed, threatened and persuaded to runway from her school hostel by a bus conductor whom she was in love with. He blackmailed her with a photo album of her and had her travel with him. He then threatened her that he would make nude films with her photos if she informed her parents about the trip.

In a planned move, somewhere during the trip he got off the bus and disappeared. The second accused, Usha, who was travelling in the same bus offered help to the girl and subsequently handed over her to Advocate Dharmarajan, the prime accused in the case. On the pretext of taking the girl to her relative’s house, he took the girl to a lodge and raped her. There after, Usha and Dharmarajan presented her to several men, including influential politicians, businessmen and other prominent persons, at various places in Kerala and Tamilnadu.

The girl was held in coercive confinement, injected with drugs to prevent her escape, thereby also making her more liable for exploitation. It was only when she fell seriously ill and she could no longer serve the exploiters’ purposes that she was abandoned. Her captors threatened her with dire consequences if she told anyone about what had happened. After 40 days, she came back home on February 26, 1996.

Though the ordeal of the girl shocked Kerala, what happened soon after was sheer injustice. The girl and her family were socially ostracized and they passed through traumas of several lifetimes. The girl had to abandon her studies. There was tremendous pressure on the family not to register a case. The investigation was inordinately delayed and the involvement of the influential persons resulted in scuttling of the entire probe. In the name of identifying the culprits, the police paraded the girl all over the State along with the accused. Where ever they stopped, the public abused the girl. The newspapers celebrated the incident with pulpy stories. There were threats on the minor girl’s life to withdraw from the case. In the 1996 Assembly elections, the Opposition Left Democratic Front made the scandal one of its major campaign issues, especially in view of allegations that one of the men guilty was a prominent ruling party politician (eventually, however, his name did not figure in the charge-sheet for want of evidence), and came into power.

It was under tremendous public pressure that the LDF government set up the State's first-ever Special Court to try a case of sexual assault. A special investigation team probed the case for two-and-a-half years. After holding a 317-day trial, the Special Court on 6 September 2000 handed down stiff punishments to 35 of the accused -- 32 men and three women. Nine of them, including one woman, were sentenced to 13 years' rigorous imprisonment--for conspiracy, abduction, illegal detention, rape and gang rape.

Later in 2002, the court tried the prime accused Dharmarajan, who was absconding during the first phase of the trial, to rigorous life imprisonment. The court had termed the offences by the advocate as rarest of rare offences. The court had further gone on to observe that the accused was a hardened criminal, and as a lawyer he knew the ramifications of his gruesome criminal acts.

Source: http://www.indiatogether.org/2005/apr/wom-surynelli.htm