Expect crime in India to rise before we bend this curve

Every year, the National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) puts out a collated report on crime in India. The just released report for 2023 has information on crime broken down by states, metropolitan cities and types of crime.

- NARAYAN RAMACHANDRAN

The NCRB, set up in 1986, is our national agency responsible for collecting and analyzing crime data specified under the Indian Penal Code (IPC) and Special & Local Laws (SLL). Four years ago, the National Automated Fingerprint Identification System was integrated into the NCRB, granting it a searchable database of fingerprints related to criminal activity. Unlike China, the US and UK, which have the largest crime DNA databases, India is yet to create the enabling legislation for a national repository of DNA related to crime.

While the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita replaced the IPC in 2024, the NCRB 2023 report makes for fascinating reading. Overall, India’s crime rate rose by7.2% versus the previous year, with 6.4 million cases recorded.

Over the last 20 years, the crime rate has nearly tripled to 448 per 100,000 citizens. This increase is primarily due to three factors: increased reporting, urbanization of crime and the advent of cybercrimes. In 2023, India witnessed a crime every 5 seconds. Cybercrime rose sharply (up 31.2%), as did crime in metropolitan cities (10.6%). While the number of murders in India is roughly the same as that of the US each year (over 20,000), the murder rate in India is only 40% that of the US per 100,000 citizens. India’s murder rate of 2.3 per 100,000 is one-tenth that of Mexico and Brazil and double that of the UK.