Safer in Bengaluru? That’s what the numbers say!

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How safe is Bengaluru, really? How has the city fared in terms of crimes against women and other offences when compared to the other metros in the country? Praveen Kumar and Prakruti Koratagere bring you the answers to these questions and more. National Crime Records Bureau statistics show that Bengaluru’s crime graph hasn’t gone up in the past year, but is that due to genuine containment of crime or is it due to non-registration of cases? In the final analysis, Bengaluru still remains the third most unsafe city in India.
It appears that citizens of Karnataka can breathe easy for a while, considering that Assam tops the crime charts with an increase of 16.4% with respect to the incidence and rate of total cognizable crimes, as compared to 2011. Of the total crimes registered in the country in 2012, Karnataka ranks tenth, seeing no change from its position last year.
While Karnataka may have seen a dip in overall crime by 2.6% when compared to 2011, an in-depth analysis of the NCRB statistics for 2012 shows that Bengaluru has fared equally well with a drop of 3.3% in city-based crime.
In 2011, Bengaluru’s police had registered 30,283 cases under the Indian Penal Code (IPC) and Special and Local Laws (SLL); but that number decreased to 29,297 in 2012, statistics showed. Going by the numbers that other metros are showing, however, Bengaluru is relatively better off.
Among the 53 cities in the country, crime in Coimbatore managed to escalate by a whopping 157% from 2011, followed by Kolkata at 47.9%. Hyderabad and Delhi reported a marginal rise of 2.1% and 1.6% respectively in overall crime; but Chennai and Mumbai accounted for a decline of 6.9% and 6.6% respectively, compared to last year’s findings.
Crimes against women in particular showed an alarming figure of 6.18% as Bengaluru’s contribution to the overall national total. Coming in third for murders with 266 cases, Mumbai took the second spot with 275 murders, while Delhi topped the list with 408 killings.
Other serious crimes including robberies placed Mumbai on top with 1131 cases, followed by Thane with 757 cases. Unexpectedly, Pune came in third with 731 robberies reported for 2012, followed in fourth place by Bengaluru with 670 robberies.
Although it has seen a decline of 3.3% in overall crime, Bengaluru remains the third most unsafe city with 29,297 cases registered under the IPC and SLL; with a rate of 344.7 total cognizable crimes for a population of 84.99 lakhs.
City ranks second in crimes against women: NCRB
It appears that the scores of women’s rights organisations, coupled with the multitude of protests against rape and crimes against women that the city embraces have been put to shame; going by the data released by the National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) for 2012. Bengaluru comes in at a shocking second with its contribution to crimes against women in the country, trumped only by Delhi.
While the latter recorded a 14.18% of cases last year, Bengaluru was not far behind, having registered 6.18% of the city-wise total cases of crimes against women in India. While the state of Karnataka reported 10,366 cases, Bengaluru city alone registered 2,263 of them.
In 2011, the city’s percentage of crimes against women was 4.2%, having registered 1890 cases. Unfortunately, that number escalated to 2263 in 2012, clocking in at 6.18%, with a two-percent increase.
The number of rapes reported in the city was 90, along with 433 kidnap and abduction cases. Not surprisingly, 225 of these kidnapped women were aged between 15-18 years. Karnataka registered 218 cases of dowry harassment, of which 51 were from Bengaluru city. However, there seemed to be an incline in cases of cruelty by husbands and relatives, with the city seeing 524 such cases last year.