The NCRB report also shows that the rate of crime against women (number of incidents per 1 lakh population) increased from 56.5 per cent in 2020 to 64.5 per cent in 2021. A majority of these cases (31.8 per cent) fall in the category of “Cruelty by husband or his relatives’’, followed by “Assault on women with intent to outrage her modesty” (20.8 per cent), kidnapping and abduction (17.6 per cent), and rape (7.4 per cent).

According to the report, the highest rate of crime against women in 2021 was registered in Assam (168.3 per cent), despite a marginal dip over the last three years. The state recorded over 29,000 such cases last year.

The other top states in this category include Odisha, Haryana, Telangana and Rajasthan. Rajasthan, like Assam, showed a marginal decrease in the actual number of cases while the three other states (Odisha, Haryana and Telangana) marked an increase.

The report places UP on top (56,083) in terms of actual number of cases registered in 2021, although the rate is lesser at 50.5 per cent. The other states that recorded the highest number of crimes against women include Rajasthan, Maharashtra, West Bengal and Odisha.

Nagaland stood out with the lowest number of crimes against women registered in the past three years — 43 in 2019, 39 in 2020 and 54 in 2021. It also had the lowest crime rate against women for 2021 at 5.5 per cent.

Among Union Territories, Delhi had the highest rate of crime against women in 2021 at 147.6 per cent. It also topped in absolute numbers of cases registered, recording an increase over the past three years from 13,395 in 2019 to 14,277 in 2021.

The NCRB also collates data for crime against women in 19 cities across the country with a population of over 2 million.

Among these cities, the 2021 data shows that Jaipur had the highest rate at over 194 per cent, followed by Delhi, Indore and Lucknow. Chennai and Coimbatore — both in Tamil Nadu — had the lowest rate.

In actual numbers among these cities, Delhi topped in 2021 (13,982) followed by Mumbai, Bengaluru and Hyderabad. Delhi also marked the highest number of actual cases in the past three years amongst these cities, with 12,902 in 2019 and 9,782 in 2020.

Rajasthan had the highest rate of rape for 2021 at 16.4 per cent and topped in actual numbers with 6,337 cases registered last year. UP, Madhya Pradesh and Maharashtra followed with over 2,000 cases registered last year in these states. Rajasthan also had the highest number of minor girls raped in 2021 with 1,453 cases registered.

Overall, there were 31,677 cases of rape registered in the country last year, marking a marginal decline over the past five years from 33,977 cases in 2018.

Cases of “murder with gangrape/rape”, for which the NCRB has maintained records since 2017, have remained steady — 284 cases in 2021, the same as in 2019. In 2020, there were 218 such incidents. The highest number of cases under the category were registered in 2018 with 291.

The highest number of such cases took place last year in UP with 48, followed closely by Assam with 46. Bihar, Arunachal Pradesh, Goa, Himachal Pradesh, Manipur, Mizoram, Nagaland and Uttarakhand did not register any cases under this category last year.

According to NCRB data, rape-murders make up less than 1 per cent of the total rapes in the country annually. In these cases, the NCRB data between 2017-2021 shows that UP, Assam, Madhya Pradesh and Maharashtra had the highest number of cases in the country annually for rape-murders for the period of 2017-2020.

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Over 28,000 women were abducted last year to be “compelled into marriage’’, including 12,000 minors, with the highest number recorded in UP (8,599) followed by Bihar (6,589), the NCRB report shows.

Only 507 cases were registered in the country under the Domestic Violence Act in 2021 — 0.1 per cent of the total cases of crime against women. The highest number of cases (270) were filed in Kerala. Meanwhile, 6,589 cases of dowry deaths were registered last year with the highest number of such deaths registered in UP and Bihar.