Crime against women in India: A geographical appraisal

Abstract

Crimes against women are one of India's most serious social issues. Women's status in traditional Indian society is appalling in the twenty-first century. Despite the existence of numerous laws and penalties, rape, murder, dowry deaths, human trafficking, kidnapping, and abductions against women are on the rise. In 2021, the rates of lifelong physical or sexual intimate partner violence and child marriage were 28.8 percent and 27.3 percent, respectively. India’s global gender gap index is 0.63, which leads the country to rank 140th out of 156 countries. Every sixteen minutes, a woman in India is raped, and every four minutes, a woman is abused by her in-laws. The current study seeks to investigate the six major types of crimes against women, including "dowry death," "cruelty by husband or his relatives," "kidnapping and abduction of women," "human trafficking," "rape," and "assault on women with intent to outrage her modesty." The study also analyses the spatio-temporal variations and trends of these types of crimes based on the data provided by the National Crime Records Bureau from the years 2014 to 2019. Basic statistical techniques such as percentage, average, standard deviation, coefficient of variance, and z-score are used to analyse the data.