In particular, regaining the Scheduled Caste voters it lost in the 2018 polls would be an uphill task for the BJP, if we go by the National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) data for Madhya Pradesh. The data depicts a pattern rather than an oddity when it comes to crimes against members of Scheduled Castes.

In the last five years, according to the NCRB data, the registered cases of crimes against members of Scheduled Castes increased by 22%, from 5,892 in 2017 to 7,214 cases in 2021.

Although Madhya Pradesh stands third in terms of cases registered, and Uttar Pradesh is on top in this ranking, with Rajasthan following, it has the highest crime rate of 63.60 against the national rate of 25.30. The crime rate against Scheduled Castes is calculated as number of crimes per 1 lakh population.

Nationally, the number of crimes against Scheduled Castes was 50,900 in 2021, and the Scheduled Caste/Scheduled Tribes (Prevention of Atrocities) Act was invoked in a total of 45,610 cases. However, the number of cases in Madhya Pradesh was 7,214, and the SC/ST Act was invoked in 7,211 instances, marking a negligible difference in the crimes against members of Scheduled Castes and crimes that involved application of the SC/ST Act.

The crime rate (number of crimes per 1 lakh population) against Scheduled Castes in 2017 was 51.90, which dipped to 41.90 in 2018 and has kept increasing since.

Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, and Bihar come in the top three states in terms of crime rate against Scheduled Castes at 63.60, 60.80, and 35.30, respectively. Uttar Pradesh, with the highest number of offences, stands at 9th rank in terms of the crime rate. Rajasthan was ranked second for 2020 and 2021, though it was first (the worst off) in 2019.

With atrocities against Dalits continually rising, the community remained unrepresented in the top executive position of the State.

Madhya Pradesh also has uncomfortable discrepancies between the share of the class category in the state population and their representation in top executive posts. Data suggests that there has been a positive partiality favouring the general category since the formation of the state in November 1956. Eighty-one per cent of the State’s chief ministers since inception belonged to the general category, which has a 6% population share.

There has not been a single chief minister from the Schedule Caste or Schedule Tribe communities, which have a population share of 15.06% and 21.90% in the State.

The Congress party’s Ravishankar Shukla became the first chief minister of the state from the general category, and since then, of 32 chief ministers, (22 from the Congress, seven from the BJP, and three from others) have ruled the state, but the BJP alone picked a backward-class leader as chief minister, six out of seven terms in power. No leader from the Scheduled Caste or Scheduled Tribe communities has been chief minister of Madhya Pradesh.

Source of all data: NCRB, Census 2011, and HT database

The author is a freelance journalist. The views are personal.

Courtesy: Newsclick

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The National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) in its annual report Crime in India 2021 captures the trends of crime in our country. The report contains crime against vulnerable sections such as women, children, senior citizens, as well as people hailing from historically oppressed communities like Scheduled Castes (SC) and Scheduled Tribes (ST).

As it is mandated by the Prevention of Atrocities Act, 1989, cases of violence and discrimination against SCs and STs need to be recorded separately for review and monitoring purposes. These atrocities are primarily linked to the caste and ethnicity related issues with the perpetrators usually belonging to communities other than SCs and STs, i.e., mostly dominant caste and social groups of society.    

It is reported that a total of 50,900 cases were registered for committing crime against SCs and 8,802 cases were registered for committing crime against STs in the country. It shows a consistent increase in the crime rate. In comparison to the year 2020, in 2021 the rate of atrocities has increased by 6.4% in case of ST’s and by 1.2% in case of SC’s.  

The nature of cases reported include rape of women and children, attempt to rape, sexual harassment, acid attack, assault on women with intent to outrage her modesty, stalking, voyeurism, kidnaping and abduction, riots, robbery, arson, criminal intimidation, intentionally insult or intimidate with intent to humiliate, occupy/take possession of lands belonging to SCs and STs, prevent/deny or obstruct usage of public places/passages, force to leave the place of residence or social boycott and practices of untouchability.

The states having maximum number of cases include Uttar Pradesh, Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, Bihar and Odisha. Together, these top five state account for more than 70% of the cases of atrocities against SCs. Meanwhile, MP, Rajasthan, Odisha, Maharashtra and Telangana together account for more than 75% of the total atrocity cases against STs. In atrocity cases against both SCs and STs, the state of Odisha has featured among top five states having many cases.

There are a total of 70,818 cases of atrocities against SCs and 12,159 against STs pending for investigation at the end of the year 2021. A total of 2,63,512 cases of SCs and 42,512 cases of STs were placed for trial in the courts. At the end of the year, more than 96 percent of the total cases were still pending for trial. Though the charge-sheeting percentage was more than 80% but the conviction rate was below 40%. This shows the status of our criminal justice administration specially access of vulnerable victims to speedy trial and justice.

It has been a matter of deep concern for the state of Odisha that has a sizable population of SCs and STs. But the rate of crime and atrocities against SCs and STs is no way less than that in the states of UP, Rajasthan and MP.

The report says atrocities against SCs in Odisha shows an increasing trend during the last three years – in 2019, the number of cases registered was 1,886; in 2020, the number increased to 2,046, and in 2021 the number of cases further increased to 2,327. Same was the case of STs as the reported number of cases registered were 576 in 2019, that increased to 624 in 2020, and 676 for the year 2021. Till the end of the year 2021, a total 2,692 cases of atrocities against SCs and 802 cases of STs were pending investigation by competent authority, and 16,355 cases of SCs and 5,852 cases of STs were pending trial in different designated special courts in Odisha.

Why such an increase in the cases of atrocities against the poor and marginalised, mostly the working-class people of a backward State such as Odisha? It is also being argued by social activists and researchers working on implementation of POA Act, 1989 that the reported data by the Home Department were the cases registered in different police stations of the state while there were equal number of cases that are underreported due to a number of reasons, as it is not easy to get the cases registered due to non-cooperation by police and many cases are being settled under pressure by influential people of dominant castes and by mostly those belonging to ruling parties.

Poverty, illiteracy, landlessness and economic dependency of the marginalized, especially the SCs and STs in Odisha makes them more vulnerable to atrocities. Unfortunately, the institutional mechanism to monitor such cases of crime and atrocities against SCs and STs in the state has been dysfunctional as the state vigilance and monitoring committee under the chairmanship of the chief minister has not been formed and hence no review meetings for a long time, as is the fate of district committees headed by the district collectors.

On the other hand, lack of organization at the grassroots as self-defense mechanisms to provide security against the organized atrocities has been largely absent due to lack of proper information about legal mechanisms. The rise in economic distress, landlessness, unemployment and low income along with untouchability practice make their life miserable and defenseless. There are also instances of false cases being registered against the poor and the marginalized SCs and STs to harass them and also to force the victims to withdraw the atrocity cases.

The NCRB in its Prison Statistics India 2014 reports that the percentage of SCs, STs, Muslims and Christians inmates is proportionately higher than their national population percentage. It shows the vulnerability of the socially and economically marginalized groups in our continued criminal justice administration and their access to justice.

A study on women prisoners by the State Commission for Women, Odisha, revealed that about 63 per cent of women belong to SCs and STs and other backward communities and a majority of them are economically poor and illiterate. The present scenario of criminal justice administration is extremely discouraging without a timely and fair trial to ensure justice. The provisions of the legal aid and justice delivery system have not served much to the marginalized section of our country, including backward states such as Odisha. Many of the innocent SCs and STs in south western parts are being jailed with accusations of left extremist involvement without a scope of representation to prove their innocence.

The legal-aid authority and prisoners welfare fund has failed to cover major prisoners to ensure minimum humanitarian aid to the poor victims. Their suffering has been manifold, with a damaging impact on their family life. The long-delayed process of judicial trials for the illiterate poor has been an excruciating experience. While taking forward the agenda of economic growth and social development, the state government must seriously look into the age-old issues of crime against humanity to build a socially inclusive Odia society.

*Views expressed are the author’s own. The writer is a social activist from Bhubaneswar, Odisha.

Other pieces by Manas Jena:

Ghunghutipada Slum in Sambalpur district of Odisha – How Temple project discriminates against the Landless Dalit

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Image Courtesy:forbes.com

As many as 42,844 suicide deaths were recorded in 2019 of people involved in farming or daily wage work, as per the National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) report released on September 1, 2020.

According to the report, out of the 1,39,123 deaths in India, 32,563 deaths were of daily wage workers with 29,092 men, 467 women and 4 transgenders, amounting to 23.4 percent of the total deaths. Similarly, 10,281 persons involved in farming sector, such as famers, cultivators, agricultural labourers died by suicide last year, making up for 7.4 percent of the total deaths in India. Out of 5,957 farmers or cultivator deaths, 5,563 deaths were of men and 394 deaths were of women. Moreover, out of the 4,324 agricultural labourer deaths 3,749 deaths were of men and 575 deaths were of women.

Together these two sectors accounted for nearly 31 percent of suicides in India with farming problems as one of the prime reasons of death by suicide.

Moreover, Maharashtra recorded the highest deaths in the farming sector – 1247 deaths – while Tamil Nadu recorded the highest number of deaths of daily wage earners – 5186 deaths. Both these States are deeply invested in farming wherein many daily wage workers are also engaged as agricultural labourers.

However, Bihar, Manipur, Odisha, Uttarakhand and West Bengal recorded zero farmer suicides and no union territory recorded a single farmer suicide.

According to General Secretary of the All India Kisan Sabha (AIKS) Hannan Mollah said, that the data is inaccurate because there have been suicide deaths in nearly every State of India.

Talking about Maharashtra specifically he said, “There are two major reasons why farmers in this state die by suicide. The first reason is the inaccurate rate that is given for their crops. The second reason is the loan that the farmer is unable to repay due to the inaccurate rates.”

Mollah said that even banks have started putting undue pressure on farmers to repay loans which leads the farmer to take extreme decisions.

When asked about the role of cash crops in farmer suicides, he said “Wherever there are cash crops, you can see a high number of suicide deaths.”

Maharashtra Treasurer of the AIKS Umesh Deshmukh agreed with this statement as he described how improper prices of sugarcane and cotton in Maharashtra make the production cost and loans seem overwhelming.

“Production and income play a big role in causing depression among farmers. The inability to pay loans and the prices eventually make the farmer take such steps,” he said.

Nowadays, Deshmukh said the price of sugarcane is Rs.2,800 per tonnes instead of the ideal Rs. 4,500 per tonnes. Similarly, cotton should be sold at Rs.5,000 per tonnes but is sold at half the price.

The suicide figures for people engaged in farming sector in 2018 showed 10,349 deaths – 7.7 percent of the total – indicating that the plight of farmers has not changed over the years.

Regarding deaths of daily wage earners, Tamil Nadu had the highest number of 5186 deaths followed by Maharashtra’s 4128 deaths while Jammu and Kashmir (then a state, now a Union Territory) recorded 0 deaths. Among Union territories Delhi recorded the highest deaths of 548 persons.

In the case of daily wage earners, it is much more difficult to ascertain the cause of suicides. However, according to Chairperson of the Jawaharlal Nehru University’s Centre for Informal Sector and Labour Studies Dr Santosh Mehrotra, the cause may be related to the stagnant wage curve of the workers.

“It is difficult to determine the cause for the high suicides rates in the States without proper data. However, if we consider the wages of these workers over the years, we see that their earnings have either decreased or become stagnant,” said Mehrotra.

Drawing his data of casual worker wages between 2012 and 2019 he said that the real wages of workers in rural areas was extremely low. In urban areas, the wages had increased at a snail’s pace. In fact, the wage curve for daily wage earners was better prior to 2012.

“One can imagine the impact of such a stagnancy in one’s daily wage. The slightest nuisance can unsettle their lives,” he said.

Talking about daily wage workers as agricultural labourers, General Secretary Mollah said that the number of agricultural workers is increasing. However, the helplessness of not being able to find a job acts as a heavy depressant.

In 2018, as many as 30,132 daily wage earners died by suicide.

Looking at the general trend of deaths by suicide in India, the number of deaths had increased from 1,29,887 deaths in 2017 to 1,34,516 deaths in 2018 to 1,39,123 deaths in 2019. Daily wage earners and housewives – 15.4 percent – accounted for the highest deaths.

The Indian helpline number for suicides is 915298782, while an NGO called AASRA offers a 24×7 helpline number, 91-9820466726 in both English and Hindi.

Related:

India Has The Highest Suicide Rate in South East Asia, But No Prevention Strategy
In India’s Suicide Country, Catching Mental Illness Before It Is Too Late
When It Rains, It Pours; But Maha Farmers Aren’t Giving Up
Dalit couple attempt suicide after forceful eviction, police brutality
73.2% Of Rural Women Workers Are Farmers, But Own 12.8% Land Holdings
‘Don’t vote BJP,’ Dehradun farmer writes in suicide note

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In 62 cases pertaining to custodial deaths, 33 policepersons were arrested, 27 were chargesheeted, four were acquitted or discharged, and none were convicted.

“One hundred custodial deaths in one year, in my view, point to serious cause for concern. It indicates that conditions in custody are not conducive to keeping people safe and alive,” Devika Prasad, programme head, police reforms at the Commonwealth Human Rights Initiative, a non-profit, told IndiaSpend. “The police must be made to answer for someone turning up dead while in their custody.”

Publication of the data is no deterrent to such actions, as news reports of several custodial deaths followed the NCRB data release on October 21.

On October 27, 2019, a 26-year-old youth, Vijay Singh, died in police custody at Mumbai’s Wadala Truck Terminal police station, following which five policepersons were suspended, The Times of India reported on October 30, 2019.

Singh was taken into custody after a complaint by a couple, who had accused Singh of harassing them by pointing his bike’s headlights at them while they were seated together. The youth’s family and friends have alleged that he was whipped and denied medical aid despite complaining of chest pain.

In another incident in Uttar Pradesh, 50-year-old Satya Prakash Shukla died in police custody after being tortured, his family alleged, The Tribune reported on October 30, 2019. Shukla was accused of  looting a bank employee in Peeparpur area of Sultanpur.

“Every custodial death, every case of torture is to be condemned, analysed and investigated properly to come up with findings, which then have to be put in ameliorative action,” Yashovardhan Azad, former chief information commissioner and Indian Police Service official, told IndiaSpend. “The basic directions of the Supreme Court [on police reforms] need to be followed, infrastructure needs to be ramped up, capacities should be built and manpower investment is required.”

The health and safety of any arrested person–any person in custody–is the responsibility of the police, Prasad said, adding, “This is why the law mandates a judicial inquiry to be carried out when a person dies in custody to look into the cause of death and the circumstances around it. And also why the police are to report a custodial death to the National Human Rights Commission within 24 hours of occurence, which in turn propels other accountability measures such as a videographed postmortem. These are accountability measures to safeguard against excessive force or illegality in custody.”

Suicide, the most reported cause
Custodial deaths reported in India increased by 9% from 92 in 2016 to 100 in 2017, as per NCRB data. Andhra Pradesh reported the most deaths, 27, followed by Maharashtra (15) and Gujarat (10) in 2017. These three states accounted for more than half of all custodial/lockup deaths reported.

Suicide (37) was the most reported reason for custodial deaths in 2017, followed by ‘death due to illness/death in hospitals during treatment’ (28) and ‘injuries sustained during the police custody due to physical assault by police’ (5). ‘Other’ reasons–not specified–accounted for 22 deaths.

“To a certain extent, suicide deaths in custody are true,” Azad said, citing the example of the Nirbhaya case, where he said “Ram Singh (the main accused) was in jail and not even in police custody when he committed suicide. It could be because of shame or other reasons.” 

Human rights violation
The NCRB also recorded 56 cases against police personnel for human rights violations in 2017; 57 police were arrested, 48 chargesheeted and three convicted. Most cases registered under this category were for ‘torture/causing hurt/injury’ (17), followed by ‘deaths in custody’ (7), ‘encounter killing’ and ‘extortion’, both registering six cases each.

“Torture is a grave crime and human rights abuse should never be seen as inevitable,” Prasad said. “If a policing system is relying on torture to retrieve information from accused persons, it is broken and has lost its credibility. There is nothing useful or purposeful that can come out of torture.”

It is only painstaking investigation, finding and following up on clues, corroborating information, collecting and preserving evidence, learning new interrogation and investigative techniques that can hope to retrieve accurate and useful information, Prasad said, adding that torture is absolutely prohibited by law in India: “It is against the law to forcefully extract a confession.”

Ground realities
Injury is inflicted usually while trying to solve cases related to crime investigation and property–like house-break, Azad said. “The conviction in house break cases is very low so there is intense pressure on the police to solve the cases within a limited period during which the police succumb.”

Force is used while apprehending a criminal or suspect on the run for a long time. In rural areas, there is no scientific aid like CCTV to support the process of investigation and in such cases, the police succumb to the use of force, Azad said. The state of equipment is poor due to small budget allocations.

Calling for improved infrastructure and personnel capacity, Azad said “a rickety infrastructure with rudimentary facilities cannot inspire high grade policing”. “Except for a few places in the headquarters, there are no proper interrogation cells,” he said, “One cannot bring the suspect or the accused on the vehicle 80-100 km to interrogate to the police headquarters. So to try quick methods, lower-level officials at times use force which can cause accidental injury or hurt leading to serious damage. This is the reality of policing,” he said. 

Police stations in rural areas lack basic amenities such as telecommunications signal or network, internet connectivity, vehicles and motorable roads. Conditions in the hawalaat (lockup) are so bad that just living in such conditions is torture, apart from being held in custody, Azad said. 

“Zero tolerance”
“We have zero-tolerance against extra-judicial deaths, police atrocities but we should also concentrate equally on terrorism because that’s the biggest attack against the human rights,” Amit Shah, union home minister, said addressing the 26th foundation day celebrations of the National Human Rights Commission in Delhi on October 12, 2019, India Today reported.

“It is our responsibility that not a single person should die in police custody needlessly or a person should be a victim of extrajudicial killing. But we will also have to provide facilities for every person to live with dignity,” Amit Shah said.

Some fixes
“There are instrumentalities present in the system today to tackle the issue of custodial deaths,” Azad said: every custodial death is subject to a magisterial enquiry. Even if one says the magistrate is in the same setup as the police or is working hand in hand, one has the right to file a complaint and go to court. “In many cases, the courts have taken strict actions against the accused policepersons. Not just the police, other factors and non-functioning of instrumentalities also need to be looked in to or questioned like the magistrate, court orders and the whole executive setup,” he said.

“The policemen need to be trained on investigation and techniques by the Central Board of Investigation,” Azad added, “They need to go for refresher courses on various subjects including psychology, which doesn’t happen. Instrumentalities are not working, so these are the basic reasons which we have to be looked into.”

Talking about reforms and measures to prevent custodial deaths, Prasad said, “Prevention requires a genuine and visible commitment to zero tolerance to custodial violence of any kind by police leadership. And it also requires the guarantee of prosecution of police for torture and custodial death, to send the surest signals that there is no room for inhumane actions and practices in the guise of policing. This is not the case at present.”

Also imperative is the implementation of every legal safeguard already in place–the right to medical examination, right to be produced before a judicial magistrate and to complain of maltreatment or torture, limits on the duration of police custody, right to a lawyer, right to inform a friend or family about being arrested or detained, Prasad added.

(Mallapur is a senior policy analyst with IndiaSpend.)

Courtesy: India Spend
 

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On October 20, the NCRB simultaneously released two of its annual reports—“Prison Statistics India 2017” and “Crime in India 2017”.The reports contain statistics collated by the Board as to the number and types of deaths occurring in judicial and police custody respectively. Here, we look into the findings from these documents.

Deaths in judicial custody
The report notes that 1,671 prisoners have died in 2017 while they were in judicial custody. These deaths in jails have been broadly classified into natural deaths (1,494) and unnatural deaths(133). The natural deaths category includes those by illness (1,373)or ageing (121).348 of these deaths were from heart disease, while 164 were from some type of lung ailment. At least 85 of the natural deaths were caused by the prisoner catching tuberculosis.

The unnatural deaths have been sub-categorised into such as suicide (109), accidental deaths (9), murder by fellow inmates (5), deaths due to assault by outside elements (5) and a catch-all “others” (3).The number of unnatural deaths in prisons has increased by 15.7 per cent from 115 in 2015.
During 2017, Uttar Pradesh has reported the highest number of deaths by natural causes at386. The state is followed by Punjab (131) and Maharashtra (111).

Deaths in police custody
The “Crime in India” comprises a special chapter that enumerates custodial crimes reported in the country in 2017.

A total of 100 persons died in police custodythat year, withAndhra Pradesh having the highest number at 27. The most common reason reported for custodial death in 2017 was suicide (37) followed by death in illness/hospital during treatment (28).

The Times of India noted that 106 people have lost their lives in Maharashtra in police custody within the four-year period between 2013 and 2017, followed by Andhra Pradesh (65), Gujarat (51), Tamil Nadu (38) and Telangana (12). In 47 of the 106 incidents from Maharashtra, a magisterial or judicial inquiry had been initiated, while in 14, cases registered, and in 19 of them, chargesheets had been filed.None of the seven union territories reported any deaths in police custody in 2017.

The report further classified certain incidences as human rights violation while showing statistics as to those cases registered against police officers. These include: encounter killing, deaths in custody, illegal detention, torture/causing hurt/injury, extortion, and“other”.

No state police personnel has been convicted for any reported deaths in custody in 2017.

Out of the 56 registered cases of human rights violations by the police in 2017, only half of the cases (29) get chargesheeted, only half of those get investigated to completion (14), and only a fifth of those have gotten convictions (3).The probability of a registered case amounting to a conviction was, thus, 1 in 18.
 
Related:
Civilian Deaths in Police Actions Surge to Record Levels: NCRB Report
Under BJP Govt, Data Comes to Delhi… and Dies
In a country where custodial deaths & torture have been normalised, its a whistle-blower who gets ‘exemplary punishment’

The post When Your Deathbed is Behind Bars: NCRB Reports on Deaths in Judicial and Police Custody appeared first on SabrangIndia.

Representational image.
 

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“I feel that the data is misleading,” Sanjay Upadhyay, an environmental lawyer and founder of the Enviro Legal Defence Firm (ELDF), India’s first environmental law firm, told IndiaSpend. “It shows that the number of environmental offences have increased so many folds but without any true impact on the environment.”

In 2016, the police registered 4,732 environmental offences, which rose 790% to 42,143 cases in 2017, according to the NCRB’s latest crime data released on October 21, 2019, after a year’s delay. As many as 29,659 cases were under the tobacco law.

In comparison, the police recorded only 36 offences under the laws for air and water pollution, even though India is home to 14 of the planet’s 20 most polluted cities.

The police registered about 8,400 cases (20% of all cases) under another new category of environmental offences: noise pollution. Some of these offences might impact the environment, such as noise near a forest reserve, but these could also be related to offences within a city. There are no publicly available data on the details of the crimes.
 

Source: National Crime Record Bureau, 2017

Crimes under the tobacco law

The Cigarette and Other Tobacco Products Act, 2003 prohibits public smoking, advertisement of tobacco products, and regulates the terms of trade of such products, among other things.

Of the 29,659 cases under the law, Tamil Nadu registered the most–20,640 cases, or about 70%. The second-highest number of cases was in Kerala, with about 23% (6,743) of the total cases. (Click here for the state-wise number of environmental offences.)

The data do not specify whether these offences are related to the use of plastic in packaging of tobacco products, public smoking or the illegal sale of tobacco or tendu leaves, a forest produce used to roll bidis (hand-rolled cigarettes), Upadhyay said. “These numbers need to be disaggregated to show their environmental impact.”

Offences for air and water pollution

Experts found the 36 recorded offences for air and water pollution misleading too.

“This number is completely disputable,” said Upadhyay. “There are 5,000 cases in the NGT [National Green Tribunal] itself, out of which a good 80% would be related to air and water act.” The NGT was set up in 2010 as a special tribunal for the expeditious disposal of civil cases relating to environmental protection and conservation of forests and other natural resources, including enforcement of legal rights related to the environment.

One of the reasons for such a low number of environmental offences in the NCRB report is because it records only criminal cases related to the environment, whereas most of the environmental cases are civil in nature, Upadhyay explained. Any agency collecting data on environmental crimes should also source data from pollution control boards and all environmental regulatory agencies, he said.

Law targets tribespeople

The police recorded 3,842 environmental offences under the three laws governing forests—the Indian Forest Act, the Forest (Conservation) Act and the Wildlife Protection Act, making up 9% of total environmental offences recorded in 2017.

All three laws govern resource extraction, often excluding people from the forest and restricting human activity in protected areas such as national parks and tiger reserves. Some experts believe that these laws unfairly punish deprived communities, especially tribespeople.

“… State officials tasked with implementing pollution control laws often do not fully comprehend them,” Geetanjoy Sahu, an associate professor at the Mumbai-based Tata Institute of Social Sciences wrote, in an article co-authored for Scroll.in in January 2018.

“While they rarely punish industrial polluters and illegal miners, pollution control officials often deploy the full might of the law against the deprived communities that are dependent on natural resources for livelihood such as the Adivasis (indigenous peoples),” Sahu wrote.

Sahu advocated that the forest administration must make tribespeople aware of the environmental rules and regulations they seem to be breaking.

(Tripathi is an IndiaSpend reporting fellow.)

Courtesy: India Spend

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In the past five and a half years, several key data releases have been excised, mangled, delayed or even suppressed. Since these are all generated, collated and processed by dedicated departments of the central government, it is not a leap of imagination that there is some deliberate intent behind this.

The post Under BJP Govt, Data Comes to Delhi… and Dies appeared first on SabrangIndia.

The home ministry explained the delay on the need for “removal of errors/inconsistencies”. It said data on 25 categories were withheld, including offences such as rape during communal riots, laws related to cows, hate crimes and attack on journalists and RTI activists, because the data were “unreliable” and “prone to misinformation”. 

At the same time, the NCRB released data in new categories/classifications such as anti national elements, circulating false/fake news/rumours, chit funds, cases under the Prevention of Corruption Act and Mental Health Act, noise pollution and defacement of public property. 

The yearly ‘Accidental Deaths & Suicides in India’ report, which includes crucial data on suicides by farmers/agriculture labourers and students in addition to accidental deaths, has not been released by the NCRB for three years now, the last publication having been for 2015.

Holding back of data “unduly delays the progress of research in the area of Criminal Justice and policy”, G S Bajpai, professor of criminology and criminal justice, and chairperson of the Centre for Criminology & Victimology at the National Law University (NLU), Delhi, told IndiaSpend in an interview, along with Ankit Kaushik, research associate at NLU.

G S Bajpai, 57, is also as the registrar at NLU, Delhi, and has authored 17 books, more than 80 papers, several monographs and project reports. He is a columnist with leading newspapers in the country. He is a member of the Standing Committee on Research Methodology for Research Projects of the Bureau of Police Research & Development of the home ministry, and has contributed in police training research and courses.

Ankit Kaushik, 27, has worked on an Indian Council of Social Science Research project on the ‘Status of Crimes Against Women’ and on a University Grants Commission project on the ‘Impact and Implementation of Juvenile Justice Act, 2000’. He has been a part of the consultative processes with the National Investigation Agency as well as the Bureau of Police Research and Development on behalf of the university.

Excerpts from our email interview:

What are the most important findings of the latest NCRB data for you?

It is not the actual statistics that are of interest to me immediately, but the NCRB’s reclassification of old offences and inclusion of new offences that is of importance. The exercise by NCRB has culminated in several new offences such as cyber bullying of women/children etc. as well as repackaging of existing offences such as morphing, data theft etc. An examination of the basis of such reclassification and creation of offences is extremely fascinating and the same must be subjected to critical analysis by scholars of criminal law, criminologists, lawyers and policy makers.

Data on lynchings, and crimes against journalists and activists, have not been included. Your comments? As a public institution, is the NCRB obligated to share these data with the public?

The official stance of the Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) for not including the data on mob lynchings and attacks against journalists has been that the data received from the police stations are unreliable as the definitions are prone to misinterpretation. Whereas it would be redundant to comment on the official stance without verifying the veracity of the MHA’s claim, it is certainly acceptable that in the absence of any official definition of mob lynching, data collection of the same would indeed be an uphill task. However, the same logic should have applied to other offences which have been created or re-classified by the NCRB since no official definitions are available for many of the newly classified offences such as fake news or fake profile.

If the data is unreliable, I doubt anything good can come out of sharing it, but then the NCRB should have refrained from sharing other data based on unreliable definitions either.

The data now include new heads such as crimes by anti-national elements. Your comments?

NCRB’s attempt at reclassification can generally be subjected to much criticism for being haphazard and unprincipled. It is rather futile to repackage old offences under new headings without any substantive changes in the offences themselves. The new offences and the classifications, in and of themselves, suffer from the lacuna of being undefined either in academic or legislative discourse. The head of ‘anti-national’ elements too suffers from the same vice. Until and unless the contours of the term ‘anti-national’ are defined, it would be unfortunate for the same to be given any kind of official recognition within criminal justice administration.

The Accidental Deaths & Suicides in India report has not been released for three years now, with its last publication for 2015. Your comment?

Any delay on the part of the NCRB in coming out with the statistics unduly delays the progress of research in the area of Criminal Justice and policy throughout the country and beyond. Studies had to rely on outdated official data for much of the past two years. It is unfortunate, therefore, that the delay in the publication of the report on Accidental Deaths and Suicides is even greater than the delay in the publication of the Crime in India Statistics as well as Prison Statistics.

Are you aware of any attempts to get the undisclosed data revealed through the Right to Information Act, and their results?

NCRB being a public body, the RTI Act is applicable to the same. In fact, a list of Central Public Information Officers can easily be found on its website. Additionally, the NCRB regularly makes disclosures under the RTI, which are also available for public access on its website. I am, however, currently unaware of any figures of the number of RTIs filed with the NCRB.

What are the challenges in collecting and publishing crime data in India? How can the process be improved? How can the process be made consistent so that data can be compared across time periods?

Data collection is perhaps the greatest challenge for publishing any report on crime in India. NCRB itself voiced discontent about insufficient cooperation by West Bengal and Bihar police. It would be much harder for any private researcher to solicit such information. The process can be significantly streamlined by creating a central database that automatically updates the macro-level data on crime in India in real time. The same can be done by ensuring that the relevant data from each FIR [First Information Report] uploaded online is automatically added to the central database. This would do away with the requirement to solicit information from each police station on an annual basis.

As for making the process consistent so as to compare data across time periods, in methodical terms, the same requires foresight as well as the ability on the part of the NCRB to adjust the previously recorded data in accordance with the novel methods. Substantively, however, it would be impossible to maintain such consistency because society generally defines and redefines both the offences as well as its gravity and punishment differently over a period of time. What may have been considered to be a serious offence in 1860 may be completely acceptable behaviour today and vice versa.

Are there any other heads you think should be included in the report, going ahead?

The report lacks a victimological perspective entirely. Crime in India cannot be studied merely from the perspective of the offence and the offender. An equally important part of the offence itself is the person or body against whom it is committed. The victims of crimes including witnesses deserve an entire chapter dedicated to describing the victims as well as analysing their issues.

Reports (here and here) suggest under-reporting of crimes/cases. What measures are required to address these challenges?

Under-reporting of crimes/cases can largely be attributed to two kinds of issues–the first are institutional, and the second are societal.

Institutional issues can be tackled through positive steps taken by the State to protect victims and witnesses as well as providing the victims with assistance–both legal and material–so as to embolden them to report the offence. Another institutional issue is the NCRB’s reliance on the ‘Principal Offence Rule’ under which only the offence with the highest punishment from amongst all offences in the FIR is taken into account by the NCRB. So in an FIR relating to rape and murder, the NCRB will count only murder and not rape. The same leads to automatic under-reporting of offences, not by the victims, but by the NCRB. Perhaps the NCRB should be asked to place lesser reliance on the rule.

Societal pressures too stop the victims of crimes from coming forward. The pressures include the threat of social stigma, unequal power structures within society or even direct threats from the accused themselves. These can be resolved through a combination of social awareness and sensitisation programmes and institutional reforms to provide protection and assistance to the victims and witnesses, in addition to taking the impact of the crimes upon the victims into account.

As a measure to uncover the dark figure of crime, victimisation surveys have emerged as one of the viable solutions where countrywide samples are taken to determine the unreported instances of victimisation, if any, suffered by people. India is a non-starter as far as the victimisation surveys are concerned. It is highly recommended that victimisation surveys be institutionalised as an alternative to official statistics of crime.

(Mallapur is a senior analyst with IndiaSpend.)

Courtesy: India Spend

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This data was ready and fully compiled and analysed. Only the top brass would know the reason why it has not been published,” an official privy to the data collection process said.

The decision to collect data on lynchings had been taken in the wake of a spate of lynching incidents across the country through 2015-16. The idea, officials said, was that such data collection would help the government formulate its policies better in tackling these crimes. Lynchings happen for a variety of reasons which include suspicion of theft, child lifting, cattle smuggling or communal reasons, officials said.

The new report has largely followed the pattern of the 2016 edition, barring additions in the category of cyber crimes and offences against the state.

In September this year, Citizens for Justice and Peace had tracked this non-publishing of NCRB data for the past three years.

This delay had been questioned by several quarters have questioned the delay in the release of data on crimes for months now. National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) has been releasing data on crime, and various categories of sectoral data, since 1953. It releases annual reports on varied subjects related to crime, accidents, prisons etc. These reports contain aggregated data on various crimes, accidents, suicides, prisons etc. up to the district level. As debates evolved, this data even got classified into crimes against India’s most marginalised groups.

Throughout the years, NCRB data, despite some bureaucratic delays and some shortcomings, has been the most important and probably the only concrete and comprehensive data on crimes in India and has been the basis for several policy discussions and discourses. Every time the NCRB reports are released, there are significant public debates on issues such as increasing numbers of crimes against women, farmer suicides, atrocities against people from SC/ST groups.The NCRB releases 3 reports every year.
 

What’s in a report and when should we have it?

The data for the annual Crime in India (CII) is provided by the States/UTs in a prescribed format. The data is then compiled by the NCRB in the form of CII, which gives comprehensive data on incidence of crime, disposal of cases by police and courts, crimes against women, children etc.

Reports suggest that CII reports has been released by the NCRB with a delay of about 23 months since the year 1953, with the average delay going at below 11 months year from 2000 onwards. The most significant delay caused in the release of the report was for the year 1984, the year in which the anti-Sikh riots took place. That year 1984’s report was released in 1992 after a significant delay of 86 months. The 1985 report was delayed by more than six years. The 1983 report was delayed by five years. Reportedly, these were the only three occasions in which the reports were released after such a huge gap/ delay. Arguably, the government(s) of the day were not comfortable with the release of hard figures that would confirm the bitter and targeted violence experienced by one of India’s religious minorities, on the streets.

The rest of the analysis on NCRB data may be read here.
 

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