Alarming Surge: India Records 24% Spike in Cybercrimes and Disturbing Trends in Crime Data
In 2022, India experienced a surge of 24 percent in registered cybercrimes compared to the previous year, as indicated by the latest data released by the National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) on Sunday. Other crime categories, such as economic offenses (11%), crimes against senior citizens (9%), and crimes against women (4%), also witnessed an increase.
According to the ‘Crime in India’ report, the number of cybercrime cases rose to 65,893, marking a 24.4 percent increase from the 52,974 cases reported in 2021. The crime rate in this category per lakh population increased from 3.9 in 2021 to 4.8 in 2022. Of the cybercrime cases registered in 2022, 64.8 percent were motivated by fraud (42,710 cases), followed by extortion at 5.5 percent (3,648 cases) and sexual exploitation at 5.2 percent (3,434 cases).
Economic offenses saw a total of 193,385 cases registered, reflecting an 11.1 percent increase from 174,013 cases in 2021. Among the specified categories of economic offenses, forgery, cheating, and fraud (FCF) accounted for the majority with 170,901 cases, followed by criminal breach of trust with 21,814 cases, and counterfeiting with 670 cases.
Crimes against Scheduled Castes (SCs) increased by 13.1 percent, reaching 57,582 cases in 2022 compared to 50,900 cases in 2021. Crimes against Scheduled Tribes (STs) also increased by 14.3 percent, with 10,064 cases in 2022 compared to 8,802 cases in 2021. Crimes against senior citizens rose by 9.3 percent, totaling 28,545 cases compared to 26,110 the previous year.
In 2022, crimes against women totaled 445,256 cases, indicating a 4 percent increase from 428,278 cases in 2021. The majority of cases were registered under “cruelty by husband or his relatives” (31.4%), followed by kidnapping and abduction of women (19.2%), assault on women with intent to outrage her modesty (18.7%), and rape (7.1%). The crime rate per lakh women population was 66.4 in 2022, compared to 64.5 in 2021.
Crimes against foreigners (tourists and residents) increased by 28 percent, with a total of 192 cases compared to 150 cases in 2021. The majority of cases were theft (34) and rape (28), with 56.8 percent of victims from the Asian continent and 18 percent from African countries.
Overall, in 2022, a total of 5,824,946 cognizable crimes were registered, comprising 3,561,379 under the Indian Penal Code (IPC) and 2,263,567 Special & Local Laws (SLL) crimes. This represents a 4.5 percent decline compared to the 6,096,310 cases registered in 2021. The crime rate per lakh population decreased from 445.9 in 2021 to 422.2 in 2022, with a decline of 2.8 percent in IPC cases and 7 percent in SLL cases compared to 2021.
