Bihar: Crime
This is a collection of articles archived for the excellence of their content. |
2005-15
The Times of India, Nov 11 2015
Himanshi Dhawan
Curbing crime top task for Bihar govt
Attacks on vulnerable people rose 20 times in 10 yrs
Since 2005 the state has seen an increase in crime against vulnerable population, including women, children and Scheduled Castes. Crime against children has increased 20 times while crimes against SCs have gone up by four times. Violence against women has doubled according to analysis by think tank Swaniti Initiative. According to Swaniti lead reseacher Ravi Kiran the overall spike in crime was fuelled by kidnapping of girls (usually for marriage). Most reported cases of kidnapping are of women to compel them for marriage. With 6,570 incidents of kidnapping and abduction registered during 2014, Bihar was just behind UP and MP in absolute numbers. Crimes against children have increased from 115 in 2005 to 2,255 in 2014, an increase of close to twenty times. Interestingly though, Bihar has one of the lowest crime rates against children in the country at 5 (per lakh child population) compared to national average of 20.1. Similar to crimes against children, the total number of crime incidence against women has also increased, almost doubling between 2005 and 2014. Cruelty by husband relatives along with kidnapping and abduction form the major chunk of crimes against women in absolute terms, while Bihar has the unfortunate distinction of topping the crime rate in dowry deaths in 2014. There has been a four-fold increase in the crimes against scheduled castes in the same period. The crime rate against SCs in Bihar is more than double that of national average. In 2014, Bihar had one of the highest crime rates against SCs -only behind Goa, Rajasthan and Andhra Pradesh. The analysis reveals that keeping in mind some bias in reporting on law and order, there can be no doubt that the number of reported cases against vulnerable communities have gone up.
