NCRB data 2023: Maharashtra’s crime rate higher than national avg, 9th among states

Maharashtra ranks ninth among the states in crime rate, with Kerala recording the highest of 1,631.2.

Overall, Maharashtra, with 5.96 lakh crimes registered in 2023, was second only to Uttar Pradesh when it came to the total number of crimes registered.

The state topped the registration of offences for assault on women with intent to outrage her modesty with a total of 12,133 cases being registered during 2023.

Officials said that an increased crime rate is a result of various factors including registration of offences by police and better facilities for citizens to come forward to give a complaint.

While the last Census in the country was in 2011, in order to calculate crime rate, NCRB referred to projections based on Report of the Technical group on Population Projections (July, 2020), National Commission on Population, Ministry of Health and Family Welfare (MoHFW) for states and union territories.

For calculation of crime rates for cities, it had to go by the 2011 census as no projections were available for cities.
Based on this data, among cities, Mumbai’s crime rate was 337.1, the third lowest among 19 metropolitan cities which had a population of more than two million.

When it came to serious offences like murder (2,208) and abduction (13,106), the state was third after Uttar Pradesh and Bihar, while the state was fourth in terms of rape cases (2,930) registered coming after Rajasthan, Uttar Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh.

Compared to the 19 metropolitan cities with a population of more than two million in terms of volume of crimes registered, Mumbai with 44,873 crimes being registered was second only to Delhi.

Mumbai topped when it came to cases related to criminal breach of trust with 1224 cases being registered. The city was also second to Delhi when it came to crimes against women with 6025 cases being registered in 2023. Similarly, when it came to crimes against children, the city registered 3110 cases second only to Delhi.

The city was third when it came to registration of offences in crimes against senior citizens after Delhi and Bangalore with 518 cases being registered. Mumbai also ranked third when it came to kidnapping cases (1,157 cases) and rape cases (387 cases) being registered.

In a section titled ‘Crime statistics’ – A word of caution in the NCRB report states, “The primary presumption that the upward swing in police data indicates an increase in crime and thus a reflection of the ineffectiveness of the police is fallacious. ‘Rise in crime’ and ‘increase in registration of crime by police’ are clearly two different things, a fact which requires better understanding.”

It added, “The genesis of crime can be traced to interplay of various social, economic, demographic, local and institutional factors. The presumption that crime occurs because of the failures of police therefore exhibits a lack of mature understanding of the theories of criminal behavior. Further, these social factors along with other latent and concomitant factors vary significantly across different regions, states and societies.”

Most number of farmer suicides

Maharashtra continued to account for the largest percentage of suicides by farmers with 38.5 per cent of the over 10,700 suicides in the farming sector taking place in the state followed by Karnataka with 22.5 per cent, as per the 2023 NCRB data.

As per the NCRB data for 2022, 37.6 per cent of the total suicides had taken place in Maharashtra followed by 21.2 from Karnataka.

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