Morung Express News
Dimapur | September 26
Nagaland is a relatively safer place for women and children in India, apparently. In the all-India list of crime against women by incidence, it fell in third place after Ladakh and Lakshadweep as the state/Union Territories (UT) with the lowest crime count against women in 2020.
Among the states, Nagaland had the lowest incidence of crime against women, as per the latest national crime data released by the National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB). The annual ‘Crime in India,’ a compendium of records of crime reported and registered across the country, for 2020 was released last week.
Against a country-wide 3,57,363 recorded incidents of crime against women, Nagaland’s figure was 39. It translated into 3.7 incidents per one lakh of population against the national average of 56.5 incidents per lakh of population. The figure for the state was 43 in 2019 and 75 in 2018.
Ladakh’s count was 9 registered cases and Lakshadweep- 15 in 2020.
The same three featured in the top 3 of states and UTs with the lowest count in the crime against children listing. In 2020, Ladakh reported only 2 such cases, Lakshadweep- 9 and Nagaland- 31.
State-wise, Nagaland had the lowest count at a rate of 3.8 incidents per one lakh of population against the all-India average of 28.9.
Arunachal Pradesh with 113 cases was second, followed by Goa and Manipur with 125 each. Among the other NE states, Mizoram reported 142, Sikkim- 147, Tripura- 260, Meghalaya- 415 and Assam- 4622 cases.
Crime head-wise breakup of crimes listed by the NCRB indicated that none of the crimes against women reported from the state in 2020 included murder. There were however 4 cases of rape, 1 dowry death, 6 cases of kidnapping of women and 2 incidents of domestic abuse or cruelty by husband or his relatives.
Of the 31 cases of crime against children, 18 were registered under the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences (POCSO) Act. There were 21 victims in the cases registered under the POCSO Act, out of which 19 were girls.
In total, including cases registered under the Indian Penal Code, the number of victims was 36. There were 3 murders, of which one was rape with murder.
There was however overlapping of data as POCSO cases, in which the victims were minor girls, were also indicated in the data for crime against women.
