Delhi accounts for 25 per cent of the crime — 670,000 plus criminal cases in 2015, according to National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) — reported from the 53 mega cities in India. The city beat its own record of the previous year by three per cent.

The steady climb in crime figures for the city could be because people are reporting more crimes, police stations have become more accessible, and police are indeed registering complaints. That said, Delhi remains an unsafe city. The Commonwealth Human Rights Initiative’s 2015 Crime Victimisation and Safety Perception report of Delhi and Mumbai households found that in Delhi, only half of crime victims actually went to the police and only half of the reports were registered. So the actual number of crimes could be four times higher than the official figures.

While crimes by ordinary people are underreported, the exceedingly low numbers of registered cases of crimes committed by the police is also cause for serious worry. In 2015, out of 97 deaths in custody across the country, only 33 cases were registered against police personnel. Like in the years before, not a single police officer has been convicted. Read More