What India’s 2024 crime statistics reveal (and miss) about violence against women

The Crime in India report is the National Crime Records Bureau’s (NCRB) flagship annual publication and the principal source of official crime statistics in India. Published since 1953, the report draws from the First Information Reports (FIRs) registered at police stations across the country. Since the rollout of the Crime and Criminal Tracking Network and Systems (CCTNS), crime data has largely been recorded and transmitted through a standardised digital system, with the State Crime Records Bureaus responsible for verification before submission to the NCRB for compilation and publication.

Violence against women is not merely a criminal justice concern but also an indicator of the social and structural inequalities that shape women’s lives. NCRB’s category of crimes against women includes all the crimes recognised by the criminal justice system, ranging from rape, sexual assault, and kidnapping to domestic violence, dowry-related offences, trafficking, and violations of laws such as the Protection of Women from Domestic Violence Act and the Dowry Prohibition Act. Drawing on the latest Crime in India 2024 report, this article examines the scale and nature of crimes against women in India. It analyses patterns across states, offence categories, and perpetrator profiles, while also considering the forms of violence that remain beyond the reach of official statistics.

What NCRB crime statistics can and cannot tell us

NCRB statistics are a record of crimes that enter the criminal justice system, not a direct measure of the total incidence of crime. Incidents that were not reported to police, or were reported but not formally registered through an FIR, are not captured by  these statistics. This is particularly relevant in the context of violence against women, where social stigma, fear of retaliation, economic dependence, and institutional barriers can prevent survivors from seeking formal redress through the criminal justice system. Thus, these numbers underestimate the actual violence against women.

Second, the NCRB follows the Principal Offence Rule, under which a case is counted only under the offence carrying the highest prescribed punishment among all offences registered in a single FIR. Where multiple offences arise from the same incident, the remaining offences are not counted separately in crime statistics. A case involving both rape and murder, for instance, would be recorded only under murder, as it carries the higher maximum punishment; the rape would not appear in rape statistics despite having occurred. Individual crime categories should therefore not be interpreted as exhaustive measures of the harms experienced by victims. This is another reason why sexual crimes against women are likely to be undercounted in the FIR data. 

Third, crime numbers are shaped by reporting, registration, and administrative practices. Therefore, we should exercise caution  when comparing crime rates across states and union territories. Recorded crime reflects not only crime incidence but also differences in reporting. As the NCRB itself notes, an increase in recorded crime does not necessarily imply an increase in the incidence of crime. Higher recorded crime may result from improved reporting mechanisms or more effective police registration, while lower recorded crime may indicate barriers to reporting or under-registration rather than lower levels of victimisation. 

Finally, the 2024 NCRB data must be read against the backdrop of a major overhaul of India’s criminal laws. On 1 July 2024, the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita (BNS), Bharatiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita (BNSS), and Bharatiya Sakshya Adhiniyam (BSA) replaced the Indian Penal Code (IPC), Code of Criminal Procedure (CrPC), and Indian Evidence Act respectively. As a result, offences registered before and after July 2024 were recorded under different legal frameworks. The transition to the new criminal laws primarily involved the renumbering of offences, alongside some changes to their definitions and scope. The NCRB therefore advises caution when comparing 2024 figures with earlier years, as changes in legal classification may affect comparability of crime trends over time.

On average, a crime against a woman was registered every 71 seconds in India in 2024

Figure 1 shows the total registered crimes against women and the corresponding crime rate, measured as cases per lakh female population, between 2022 and 2024. Registered cases stood at 4,45,256 in 2022, increased marginally to 4,48,211 in 2023, and declined to  4,41,534 in 2024. The year-on-year changes could be a result of several factors. We should note that the data continue to reflect a large volume of registered violence against women. The 4,41,534 cases registered in 2024 translate to roughly 1,210 FIRs filed every day, or one crime against a woman being filed approximately every 71 seconds across India. 

Alongside the number of registered cases, the NCRB reports the crime rate, measured as crimes per lakh women. These rates are calculated using the NCRB’s mid-year female population projections, based on the report of the technical group on population projections (2020) of the National Commission on Population. The national crime rate for crimes against women declined marginally from 66.4 cases per lakh women in 2022 to 64.6 in 2024.

Uttar Pradesh recorded the most cases. Delhi recorded the highest crime rate

Figure 2 illustrates why crime rates can tell a different story from absolute case counts: despite recording the largest number of cases (66,398), Uttar Pradesh’s crime rate of 58 per lakh women remained below the national figure of 64.6. By contrast, Delhi (130.7) and Telangana (128.6) recorded crime rates nearly twice the national average, followed by Odisha (118.3), Haryana (96.4) and Rajasthan (91.3); these were the five states with crime rates exceeding 90 per lakh women. At the other end of the spectrum, among the major states, Tamil Nadu (29.4) and Gujarat (22) reported comparatively lower crime rates, while Manipur (12) and Nagaland (5.1) recorded the lowest rates nationally.

One in four crimes against women involved cruelty by husband or relatives

Figure 3 shows that cruelty by husband or relatives was the single largest category of registered crimes against women in 2024. With 1,20,227 cases recorded, it accounted for more than one in four crimes against women (27.2 percent) and had a crime rate of 17.6 cases per lakh women. This is equivalent to approximately 329 cases per day, or one registered case approximately every four minutes. Covering physical abuse, harassment, mental cruelty and coercion, its prominence underscores the extent to which a majority of registered violence against women occurs within the domestic sphere.

Beyond cruelty by husband or relatives, kidnapping and abduction of women (67,829 cases) and Protection of Children from Sexual Offences (POCSO) Act offences where the victim was a girl child (67,809 cases) emerged as the next largest categories, each accounting for 15.4 percent of all registered crimes against women and recording crime rates of 9.9 per lakh women. “Assault with intent to outrage modesty” accounted for 48,303 cases (10.9 percent; 7.1 per lakh women), while rape accounted for 29,536 cases (6.7 percent; 4.3 per lakh women). Together, these five offence heads accounted for nearly three-quarters of all registered crimes against women in 2024.

Who commits violence against women? Most often a relative, partner, or other known person

Perpetrator data on rape cases provide further insight into the relationships within which violence against women occurs. Figure 4 shows that the accused was known to the survivor in 96.8 percent of rape cases registered in 2024. Friends or intimate partners constituted the largest category of known perpetrators (47 percent), followed by neighbours and other known persons (42.6 percent) and family members (7.2 percent). By contrast, only 3.2 percent of cases involved an unidentified offender.

Taken together, these findings suggest that violence against women is often embedded within the social relationships that structure everyday life. That more than one in four registered crimes against women involved cruelty by husband or relatives (Figure 3), alongside the persistence of dowry deaths and the overwhelming majority of rape cases involving known perpetrators, challenges the common perception that violence against women is primarily a threat posed by strangers. Instead, these patterns suggest that the most pervasive forms of violence emerge within relationships of trust, familiarity, and dependence, making family and social relationships central to understanding women’s experiences of harm.

What type of violence against women do India’s crime statistics miss?

The scale of violence against women extends far beyond what is captured in official statistics. This is not only a consequence of underreporting, but also of the legal and statistical frameworks through which violence is recorded. Administrative data can only capture offences that are recognised in law and classified within existing reporting systems. Forms of violence without a distinct legal category, such as marital rape, are absent from official crime statistics because they are not recognised as criminal offences. What is recorded therefore reflects not only the incidence of violence, but also the boundaries of legal recognition. Evidence from the National Family Health Survey (NFHS-5) illustrates the significance of these omissions. Among ever-married women aged 15-49 who reported experiencing sexual violence, more than 95 percent identified a current or former husband as the perpetrator, highlighting the extent to which sexual violence is concentrated within intimate relationships. As the recently released NFHS-6 (2023-24) fact sheets do not provide comparable information on the perpetrators of sexual violence, the NFHS-5 estimate remains the latest available official source of evidence on this issue. Viewed in this context, the prominence of cruelty by husband or relatives as the largest category of registered crimes against women is unsurprising. At the same time, the data suggest that much violence within marriage and family remains outside the reach of official statistics.

There is another dimension to the statistics on crimes and against women.  Rukmini S.‘s analysis of every rape judgment delivered across Delhi’s seven district courts in 2013 found that the largest category of cases before the courts involved consenting couples, with complaints often filed by parents opposed to the relationship, particularly in cases involving inter-caste or inter-religious unions. In a majority of these instances, parents reported consensual elopements as abduction and rape, leading them to be recorded and processed under these legal categories. Similarly, under the POCSO Act, 2012, any sexual act involving a person below 18 years is legally classified as rape and must be recorded as such in official crime statistics, even when the parties describe the relationship as consensual. These findings highlight that the crime statistics are records of legally defined offences, not direct measures of social reality.

Registered crime data should therefore be understood not as a direct measure of violence against women, but as the outcome of a series of institutional filters: whether violence is reported, whether it is registered by the police, and how it is ultimately classified under the law. Many countries complement police records with large-scale crime surveys that ask people directly about their experiences of victimisation, including incidents that never come to the attention of law enforcement. In the United Kingdom, for example, the Crime Survey for England and Wales serves as an important counterpart to police statistics, helping to illuminate the gap between crime experienced and crime recorded. India lacks a comparable nationwide measure. Until such evidence systems are strengthened, the 4,41,534 crimes against women recorded in 2024 should be read as an indicator of the violence that entered the criminal justice system, not a measure of the total violence experienced by women.