Number Theory: Four key takeaways from the NCRB reports

Sudden deaths have not increased after the pandemic and farmer suicides are falling, but a large number of suicides are committed by the poor.

The National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) released two of its flagship annual publications, Crime in India and Accidental Deaths and Suicides (ADSI) in India, for the year 2022 on December 3. These reports contain a wealth of information on crime, accidents, and suicides in India. Here are four key findings in the reports that stand out.

For representational purposes only. (Getty image)

Four key takeaways from the NCRB reports

• 
  Sudden deaths have not increased after the pandemic

  There have been many anecdotal accounts of people dying suddenly after the pandemic. Such deaths were linked to the effect of Covid-19 vaccines by some people, though there was no scientific evidence to suggest this. A recently released study by the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) – its findings were reported by HT on November 22 – found that “Covid-19 vaccines did not increase the risk of sudden death among young adults in India” and the “spate of sudden deaths reported post-Covid among young adults in India can be attributed to past-Covid hospitalisation, family history of sudden deaths, binge drinking, and intense unaccustomed activity”. The 2022 ADSI report, among other things, also substantiates this claim. ADSI records sudden deaths as one of the causes of accidental deaths in India. Data in the report shows that the instances of sudden deaths had an upward trend even before Covid-19. Moreover, sudden deaths as a share of total accidental deaths stagnated after 2020. ADSI report defines sudden death as “unexpected death that is instantaneous or occurs within minutes from any cause other than violence” and includes heart attacks, brain haemorrhage etc. in this category.
• 
  Farmer suicides are falling, but a large number of suicides are committed by the poor

  Farmer suicides have made news for decades in India, and are often seen as the most macabre manifestation of the agrarian crisis in the country. To be sure, whether or not farmer suicides are linked to agrarian distress has been a debated topic and the resolution of this debate has become difficult after NCRB stopped publishing data on causes of suicides among farmers since 2015. Having said this, the number of farmer suicides – this includes both cultivators and agricultural labourers – increased marginally between 2021 and 2022 and the share in total suicides (6.6%) has remained the same. To be sure, statistics in the ADSI report do suggest that poverty is a major driver of suicides in India. The ADSI report also gives a split by income of people who died by suicide. More than 64% of suicide victims in 2022 earned less than ₹1 lakh per annum; only 0.8% belonged to the richest income cohort earning ₹10 lakh per annum or more. To be sure, this data should ideally have been adjusted for relative shares – the number of poor people in India significantly exceeds the rich – but this is not possible given the fact that there is no official income database in India.
• 
  Rioting has the lowest conviction rate among key crimes, and it’s much worse outside major towns

  The Crime in India report for 2022 shows a significant fall in number of cases of rioting between 2020 and 2022 in the country. This number is 51,606, 41,954 and 37,816 for 2020, 2021 and 2022 respectively, and the crime rate – number of cases per million population – for rioting has fallen from 3.8 in 2020 to 3.1 and 2.7 in 2021 and 2022. Having said that, the fact remains that rioting had the lowest conviction rate among major crimes – murder, rape, kidnapping and abduction, hurt (including acid attacks), and rioting. These crimes are listed in the snapshots section of the 2022 Crime in India report. Another statistic in the report shows that conviction rate for rioting is much higher in large cities (population of 2 million or more) than it is at the all-India level.
• 
  Charge sheets in UAPA cases take much longer to be filed than other Special and Local Laws

  The Crime in India report also gives information on the time taken to file a charge sheet in different kinds of cases. A comparison of the time taken to file charge sheet in the Unlawful Activities Prevention Act (UAPA) cases with other Special and Local Laws (SLL) cases shows that the charge sheets take much more time to be filed in UAPA cases than SLL cases as a whole. This pattern holds for all years since 2017, the earliest period for which this data is available. While it is entirely likely that UAPA cases involve difficult and prolonged investigations, UAPA’s strict provisions always carry the risk of the law impinging on civil liberties. As far as the number of UAPA cases is concerned, it increased from 2017 to 2019 from 901 to 1,226, was lower at 796 and 814 in 2020 and 2021 and increased to 1,005 in 2022.