E-Paper
A decline in conviction rates for economic offences: Data
While India’s ease of doing business rankings has improved in recent years, if economic offences are not punished swiftly, investment in the country will suffer.
Less than 25% of economic offenders in India get convicted, according to latest Crime in India report for 2018 by National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB). Major states, including Karnataka, Gujarat, West Bengal and Maharashtra, showed less than 10% conviction rate for such offences in 2018
The latest crime report also shows that while conviction rate among economic offenders has fallen in 2018, pendency percentage of economic cases awaiting trial in court have increased in 2018.
The data assumes significance in view of the increasing economic fraud cases being exposed and reported in the public domain in recent years.
FIRs filed against officials for cases that involved huge amount of money in the past few years such as the ILFS case, PNB scam and the latest Punjab and Maharashtra Cooperative bank case involving public money, have all been filed under sections that are related to economic offences which includes forgery and cheating.
To be sure, the increase in such offences could also be an aftermath of demonetisation in 2016 and the implementation of the Goods and Services Tax in 2017 since tax evasion cases also come under economic offence.
India saw an increasing trend in economic offences with 156,268 cases reported in 2018, showing an increase of 4.9% from 2017. Among states, Bihar and Uttar Pradesh have recorded the biggest increase in economic offences between 2017 and 2018 showing an increase by 14% and 10% respectively. After showing a falling trend in the last two years (2016 and 2017), the economic offences in major metropolitan cities (recorded at 31501) also grew by over 8 % in 2018.
Lucknow and Kolkata recorded the biggest increases in economic offences between 2017 and 2018 showing an increase by 33% and 24% respectively.
The 2017-18 comparison has only included states and metropolitan cities which had a share of more than 5% of the total economic offences committed at the all-India level and total metropolitan cities respectively in both 2017 and 2018.
While India’s ease of doing business rankings has improved in recent years, if economic offences are not punished swiftly, investment in the country will suffer.
