In India it is not uncommon these days to find news of a Theft or Riots on TV, social media or newspaper. Everyday a different type of crime is reported in the news. These news cases reported are from different state and district of India.
As the news of criminal activities have become a prominent feature in the daily, it demands a deeper investigation. Due to advancement in technology, it is possible today to have data of crimes for past years.
In this report I have considered data of crimes committed in different districts of India from year 2001 to 2011. It is interesting to know what are the types of crimes that take place in every state of a country and which of the state is the most dangerous. Does higher Literacy rate ensure fewer criminal activities ? Is poverty one of the factor behind crimes in India ?
Lets dig deep into the dataset and find answer to these questions.
Theft is the most common type of crime reported in India from year 2001 to 2012. According to the Indian Penal Code (IPC),Theft is defined as : "IPC Section 378 - A person steals if he dishonestly appropriates property belonging to another with the intention of permanently depriving the other of it."
Top 10 crimes in India
Overall there was an increase in number of Criminal cases by 26.49%.
Criminal cases for Theft and Hurt/Grevious crime saw a significant increase in number. Number of cases for Theft was 233527 in 2001. The number of cases for Theft cases increased by 35% over the span of 12 years, ending with 315375 cases in year 2012. On the other hand cases for Hurt/Grevious hurt saw a increase of 22.67%, from 269476 cases in 2001.
One intresting trend that stands out is the decrease in the number of cases for Burglary. Cases for Burglary decreased by 7%, with only 91177 cases reported in 2012. Case of Murder alos saw a similar trend with a decease of 5%.
In year 2012, number of Auto theft was the highest with 139960 cases, which is a 150% increase in the number of cases.
Cases for Counterfieting, Dacoity, Importation of girls from foreign countries and Kidnapping had the least number of cases ranging between 1000 and 3000 cases.
Cases for Death by negligence, cruelty by husband or relatives, cheating and riots increased over the span of 12 years.
There was a decrease in attempt to murder cases, until 2003 when the cases again began to rise and reached 34699 in 2012.
Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra, Tamil Nadu, Andra Pradesh and Uttar Pradesh were the top 5 states with criminal cases from year 2001 to 2012.
State of Madhya Pradesh saw the highest number of Criminal cases totalling 2413770. Followed by Maharashtra, Tamil Nadu, Andra Pradesh and Uttar Pradesh having 2273436, 2060176, 2018981 and 1858074 cases respectively. Cases in Rajasthan were close to that of Uttar Pradesh having 1855916 cases.
State of Karnataka, Kerala, Gujarat, Bihar and West Bengal have cases in range of 1500000 and 1000000. Amongst these Karnataka have the hishest cases with 1481063 cases.
Delhi, capital of India has as many cases as the state of Bihar, with a total of 1266348 cases.
Odisha, Assam, Haryana and Chattisgarh has 647946, 597764, 595303 and 561027 cases respectively.
The 7 sisters states of India, namely Arunachal Pradesh, Assam, Meghalaya, Manipur, Mizoram, Nagaland and Tripura, have cases between 52000 and 7000, with the exception of Assam which had 597764 cases. Amongst these sister states, Tripura had the highest cases totalling 52734 cases.
Union terriority of Dadra and Nagar Haveli, Daman and Diu, Lakshadweep had the lowest cases with 4651, 2948 and 743 cases respectively.
Following are the % increase/decrease in the number of cases for each state.
One ot the proposed question for this study was to find a relation between Criminal activities in States of India and the overall Literacy rate and poverty rate of a state.
It can be observed that having a high Literacy in a state does not ensures less crime cases. For instance in the state of Kerala, which has the highest Literacy rate in Inida for year 2011, the number of cases are 344274. Similarly, the state of Maharashtra and Tamil Nadu also has high cases with 409804 and 385758 cases respectively. One reason that justifies these numberes is the high populaion density in these states.
Also, poverty is another factor for high number of cases in the states of Bihar, Chattisgarh, Uttar Pradesh and Madhya pradesh with a poverty rate of 53.5%, 48.7%, 37.7% and 36.7% respectively and 271792, 114436, 390270 and 434188 cases respectively.
Some states with low poverty rate show less number of cases. For instance Jammu & Kashmir, Himachal Pradesh, Goa, Punjab, Meghalaya and Uttarakhand having 49008, 28624, 6898, 69766, 5510 and 17548 respectively
Amongst the 7 sister states; Mizoram, Nagaland , Meghalaya and Tripura have high litercy and has less number of Crime cases.
Union terriorities of Andaman & Nicobar islands, Puducherry and Lakshwadeep Islands have low cases and high Litearcy rates, showing a inverse relationship between Literacy and Crime cases.
The district of Bilaspur in the state of Chattisgarh had the highest Crime rate in India in year 2011.
Delhi, the capital of India stood second in terms of Crime rate having a crime rate of 831 per 100,000 person.
Banglore, the cyber city of India had the most number of Criminal cases for year 2011 totalling 35198.
Mumbai, the Financial capital of India had the second highest number of cases totalling 35118.
Other metropolitian cities of India also had high criminal cases.
Ahmadabad, capital of the state of Gujarat, Jaipur the capital of Rajasthan also known as the Pink city, had high cases ( 23891 and 24102 ).
Chennai, a famous city in southern part of India, had 21861 cases. Indore, a city located in the geographical centre of India had 18915 cases.
Almost vast majority of districts in India had recorded cases in range of 40 and 10,000.