Odisha witnessed a marginal rise in criminal cases in 2021 compared to previous year with over 35,000 cases of crime against women being reported in the State last year, the government told the Assembly on Tuesday.
Replying to a question put by BJD MLA Soumyaranjan Patnaik, Minister of State (Home), Dibya Shankar Mishra informed that there has been a slight increase in crime instances in 2021 compared to the situation in the previous year.
The Minister said altogether 35,326 cases of violence against women were registered in 2021 including 3327 rapes, 5048 abductions and 93 human trafficking.
He said the rate of filing of chargesheets and conviction in cases related to crimes against women is 82.0 percent and 9.2 per cent, respectively. In 2021, the conviction rate for Red Flag category of cases was 45.28 per cent.
In another statement, MoS Dibya Shankar Mishra informed that as many as 11,763 rape cases were registered in the State during the last four years, from 2018 to 2021.
As per the statement of the Minister, 2,502 rape cases were registered in the State in 2018, 2,950 in 2019, 2,984 in 2020 and 3,327 in 2021.
Similarly, the women murder cases, including dowry homicide cases, have remained in between 600 and 700 in the past four years. As per the statement, 610 women murder cases, including 293 dowry homicide cases, were reported in 2021 whereas 676 women murder cases, including 320 dowry homicide cases, were registered with the Odisha police in 2020.
The State police reported 629 women murder cases in 2019 and 628 such cases in 2018, said the Minister while replying to a question of Congress MLA Santosh Singh Saluja. The number of non-dowry torture cases has increased by more than three times during past four years. While 1,616 non-dowry torture cases were registered in 2018, the number had gone up to 2,532 in 2019, 3,153 in 2020 and 4,889 in 2021.
(With agency inputs)