According to the latest NCRB data, Delhi reported over 40 per cent rise in crimes against women in 2021

Over 40 per cent annual rise in crimes against women in 2021 in Delhi puts many a question mark over the claims made by various authorities regarding the law and order situation. The fact that these numbers are from the National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB), and not some garrulous NGO, means that these cannot be swept under the carpet. At any rate, the facts and figures are horrifying: two girls were raped every day in 2021 in Delhi, which made it the most unsafe metropolitan city for women in the country. Further, the national capital also recorded the highest number, 833, of cases of girl child rape among the metropolitan cities, as per the NCRB data. This is beside the reported 2,022 cases of assault on women with intent to outrage their modesty. In 2021, there were 13,892 crime cases against women in 2021 the national capital whereas in 2020 the number of cases was 9,782. Which means that almost one third of the total number of crimes against women in cities, 43,414, last year took place in Delhi. Opposition parties cannot use the NCRB data to score political points over the Bharatiya Janata Party because Delhi, where police are under Central Government, is not the only state where the crimes against women soared. In fact, the maximum number of rape cases was reported from Rajasthan during 2020 as well as 2021, 5,310 and 6,337, respectively. In Madhya Pradesh, which was second in terms of rape cases in 2020 and 2021, the corresponding numbers were 2,339 and 2,947.

In fact, five states with maximum number of rape cases in 2020 and 2021 were Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra, Uttar Pradesh, and Assam. Of these states, two—Rajasthan and Maharashtra—were ruled by non-BJP parties. In other words, what is common among all political parties is their incompetence to check crime against women. There are two main reasons for the growing crimes against women. One is the sclerotic justice and police systems. Little is being done to introduce reforms in these systems. Second, often the issue of crimes against women gets lost in the swamps of doctrinaire phraseologies. On the one hand are the feminist activists, most of whom are of a Left-liberal disposition. Their explanations of the crimes against women and the remedies they recommend are as elusive as these are esoteric: everything they say is so much spiced with fashionable terms like ‘patriarchal’, ‘misogynist’, and ‘othering’ that the real issue gets buried in the arcane argot. On the other hand are the sanskaris who love to blame everything on the decadent pashchatya sanskriti. Meaningful discourse over the subject in the public arena hardly takes place. As a result, the laws, rules, and regulations are drafted under the pressure of events—e.g., the bloodcurdling Nirbhaya case of 2012. This is not how laws and rules should come into being in a vibrant democracy, but this is how it is.