Crimes against women in Rajasthan increased by almost 50% in the year 2019, compared to the previous year, according to crime data published by Director General of Police of the state Bhupendra Singh on Monday. Overall crimes increased by 31% during the last year in the state, with cases of rape, abduction, murder, dacoity, theft, loot etc seeing a substantial hike.
A total of 41,155 cases of crime against women were reported in Rajasthan in 2019, which is 13,561 more than in 2018. This means the cases of rape went up by 49.14% compared to 2018, while it increased by 61.01% compared to the year 2017. The cases of molestation went up by a whopping 68%, while rape cases have gone up by 38.34% in the year. The cases of rape of minors also increased by 22%.
Police officials said that the increase in crime rate is mainly due to increasing awareness among people to register cases with the police. Addressing media, the DGP said, “although there has been a spike in crime rate, disposal of cases also increased simultaneously. The law and order situation was better than 2018 and even during the Lok Sabha elections, no cases of violence were reported along with the fact that repolling was not required. There are certain issues which still need to be worked on and we are focusing on those.”
He added, “our focus in 2019 was on ensuring that every case is registered and no grievance gets left unattended. We took effective action against organised crimes last year.”
Although the cases of crime have gone up, the incidents of communal violence have gone down in Rajasthan in 2019. Compared to 313 incidents of communal violence in 2018, only 7 such cases were reported in 2019.
The disposal of cases also showed an increased, as a total of 2,07,319 cases were disposed of in the year, up 28% from the previous year.
DGP Singh added that the Special Operations Group constituted a Serious Frauds Investigation Unit and Cyber Crime Unit while CID was also planning to launch a Heinous Crime Monitoring Unit. He said that certain places like Alwar, Bhiwadi and Bharatpur needed special attention and more police personnel are being deployed in critical areas.
Expressing concern on the trend of youth seeing criminals as role models, the DGP said special emphasis will be given on motivating youngsters to look up to the work of police personnel. “Our aim is to also create awareness among youth about law as they are at times are both victims and perpetrators,” he added. The DGP also said, “We will be working more on improving the conduct of police personnel. We want to present the police force as a role model for people, particularly the youth.”
