Cybercrime against women up 28% since 2019, Karnataka’s share highest

The number of cybercrime incidents in 2021 has gone up by 18.4 per cent since 2019, but the number of such cases against women has risen at a significantly steeper 28 per cent, data released by the National Crime Records Bureau showed.

Of the 52,974 incidents reported in 2021, 10,730 — 20.2 per cent — were reported as cases of crime against women, the data revealed.

Cybercrimes against women primarily include instances of cyber blackmail, threatening, cyber pornography, posting/ publishing of obscene sexual materials, cyber stalking, bullying, defamation, morphing, and creation of fake profiles.

The top five states accounted for 61 per cent share of cybercrimes against women.

Karnataka had the highest share with 2,243 cases in 2021, followed by Maharashtra with 1,697, and Uttar Pradesh with 958 cases.

In terms of overall cybercrime cases, Telangana accounted for the highest share, as cases increased 282 per cent from 2,691 in 2019 to 10,303 in 2021.

The other four states with the highest number of cases were Uttar Pradesh (8,829), Karnataka (8,136), Maharashtra (5,562), and Assam (4,846).

In Uttar Pradesh, cybercrime cases declined 22.7 per cent, whereas in Karnataka it was down 32.3 per cent.

Among the 28 states, eight recorded a decline in cybercrime incidents in 2021 compared to 2019.

On an average, 87 per cent cases were pending trial at the end of the year compared to 94.9 per cent in 2019 — a seven percentage point drop. On the other hand, conviction rate increased from 35.5 per cent in 2019 to 42.5 per cent in 2021.

The conviction rate — percentage of case disposal by courts — for cybercrimes against women, although lower than the overall conviction rate for cybercrime cases, had jumped three times between 2019 and 2021.

The conviction rate in these cases went up from 10.8 per cent in 2019 to 35.2 per cent in 2021.

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