Indian Crime Data: Latest Till 2026

1.What Is Indian Crime Data?

Indian crime data is the official record of criminal offences registered by police forces across the country, and the single most important fact about it is what it actually measures: FIRs and police case records, not every crime that occurs. Every time a first information report is registered at a police station anywhere in India, for an offence that the police can investigate without a magistrate's prior permission (a "cognisable" offence), that case eventually flows upward, through the State Crime Records Bureaux, into the national statistics compiled by the National Crime Records Bureau. When lawyers, policymakers, journalists and researchers speak about Indian crime data, they are almost always referring to the NCRB's flagship annual publication, Crime in India, which has been the country's authoritative statement of registered crime for decades.

The report matters far beyond government circles. Courts and police forces use it to plan enforcement priorities; state governments are judged on it; home ministries use it to allocate security resources; and ordinary citizens encounter it every year in headlines declaring one state the "most dangerous" or another the "safest". Yet the same headlines routinely misread the data, because raw counts and rates measure very different things, and because the 2024 edition sits astride the most significant change in Indian criminal law in 160 years: the replacement of the Indian Penal Code, 1860 by the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita, 2023 with effect from 1 July 2024.

This article is a complete, self-contained analysis of the latest Indian crime data. It sets out every headline number from Crime in India 2024, breaks the data down by offence category, gender and state, explains the IPC to BNS transition and how the NCRB handles it, and closes with a practical guide to reading crime statistics without falling for the most common errors. Every figure is traceable to the NCRB report or to official releases reporting it.

2.The NCRB and the Crime in India Report Series

The National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) is an agency of the Ministry of Home Affairs, Government of India, headquartered in New Delhi, responsible for collecting and analysing crime data from across the country. Its best-known publications are Crime in India (registered crime), Accidental Deaths and Suicides in India (ADSI) and Prison Statistics India. The latest edition of Crime in India, covering the calendar year 2024, was released on 6 May 2026, along with the ADSI 2024 report.

The report compiles data on all cognisable offences, which are offences for which police officers may arrest without warrant and investigate without a magistrate's direction. Two broad streams are reported. The first is crime under the general penal law, historically the Indian Penal Code, 1860 and, from 1 July 2024, its successor the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita, 2023. The second is crime under special and local laws (SLL), central and state statutes such as the Arms Act, the Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances Act, the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences (POCSO) Act and the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes (Prevention of Atrocities) Act. In 2024, of the 58.86 lakh total cognisable crimes, 35.44 lakh were registered under the IPC and BNS, and 23.41 lakh under special and local laws.

Three structural features of the report shape everything that follows. First, the data is police-recorded: an offence enters the statistics only when a case is registered, so unreported crime is invisible to it. Second, the report applies the principal-offence rule: where a single FIR discloses several offences, only the most heinous offence (the one carrying the maximum punishment) is counted, so the number of cases and the number of individual offences are not the same thing. Third, crime rates are computed against the mid-year projected population of states and union territories for 2024, projected from the 2011 Census by the Technical Group on Population Projections (July 2020), which puts India's 2024 mid-year population at about 140.49 crore. The NCRB itself publishes a "Word of Caution" with every report, reminding readers that states and UTs should not be compared purely on the basis of crime figures, since registration practice, policing priorities and legal frameworks differ from one jurisdiction to another.

3.Headline Numbers from Crime in India 2024

The headline picture in Crime in India 2024 is of a broad decline in registered crime, concentrated in offences against the human body and property, against a sharp rise in cyber offences. India registered 58,85,867 cognisable crimes in 2024, compared with 62.41 lakh in 2023, a fall of about 6 per cent. The rate of cognisable crime fell from 448.3 to 418.9 per lakh population, the lowest since 2019, when the rate was 385.0. The overall chargesheeting rate for cognisable crimes stood at 80.3 per cent.

Source: NCRB, Crime in India 2024 (released 6 May 2026). Percentages are approximate, computed from the reported figures.

The following chart shows the composition of the total, and how each stream moved between 2023 and 2024. Every value in the chart is also given in the table above.

4.What Changed Between 2023 and 2024

The decline is not evenly spread. The single largest contributor was the offence of hurt, registered under IPC sections 325, 326 and 329 to 335 and their BNS successors, which collapsed by 30.6 per cent, from over 6.36 lakh cases in 2023 to about 4.41 lakh in 2024. Kidnapping and abduction fell 15.4 per cent, murder fell 2.4 per cent, and crimes against women fell 1.5 per cent. Against this, cybercrime rose 17.9 per cent, crimes against children rose about 6 per cent, offences against the state rose 6.6 per cent to 5,194 cases, and economic offences rose 4.6 per cent to about 2.14 lakh cases.

How much of this reflects reality on the ground and how much reflects the machinery of recording is the honest question to ask of any NCRB release. Three forces were at work in 2024. First, registration effects: a fall in registered cases can mean less crime, or more efficient disposal of complaints at the inquiry stage, or a change in how repetitive categories are counted. Second, the mid-year change of the penal code: from 1 July 2024, offences that would earlier have been registered under the IPC were registered under the BNS, and the NCRB itself cautions that some offences were removed, merged or reclassified, and that new crime heads were introduced, so year-on-year comparisons across the transition need care. Third, special and local laws move independently of penal-code trends, since a single state-level enforcement drive (against narcotics, arms, or excise offences, for example) can move national SLL totals.

5.Violent Crime Data: Murder, Kidnapping and Hurt

Murder

India registered 27,049 murder cases in 2024, down 2.4 per cent from 27,721 in 2023. The national murder rate works out to roughly 1.9 per lakh population. The NCRB records "disputes" as the leading motive (property disputes, land disputes, family and personal disputes), followed by personal vendetta or enmity, and gain. Uttar Pradesh, India's most populous state, registered 3,218 murders in 2024, but because of its population this is a rate of only 1.3 per lakh, well below the national average. Among metropolitan cities, Delhi recorded the most murders, 504 cases with 522 victims, far ahead of Bengaluru (176) and Surat (114).

Kidnapping and abduction

96,079 kidnapping and abduction cases were registered in 2024, down 15.4 per cent from 1,13,564 in 2023. The victim profile is distinctive: of the 98,054 victims, more than 70,000 were female, and 76,761 were children against 21,293 adults. Kidnapping and abduction of women to compel marriage remains a persistent category, with 28,949 such cases recorded in 2024, of which 13,192 involved girls below the age of 18. Within crimes against women overall, kidnapping and abduction of women accounted for 67,829 cases, 15.4 per cent of the total.

Hurt and other offences against the body

As noted above, hurt cases registered a striking 30.6 per cent fall, from over 6.36 lakh to about 4.41 lakh. This category is heavily influenced by how accurately minor assault complaints are classified at the police station, and its movement is one more reason the overall 6 per cent decline should be read with method, not just with headlines.

Source: NCRB, Crime in India 2024, as reported in official releases. "Rate" is cases per lakh population.

6.Crimes Against Women: The 2024 Data

India registered 4,41,534 crimes against women in 2024, about 1.5 per cent fewer than the roughly 4.48 lakh cases in 2023. The crime rate against women fell from 66.2 to 64.6 per lakh women population. States accounted for 4,23,759 cases and union territories for 17,775. As with every NCRB category, these are registered cases under both the penal code and special laws such as the Dowry Prohibition Act and POCSO (where the victim is a girl), and the numbers move with both incidence and the willingness and ability of victims to file complaints.

The composition of the category has been remarkably stable over the years, and 2024 was no exception. Cruelty by husband or his relatives (Section 85/86 of the BNS, formerly Section 498A of the IPC) was again the single largest head, with 1,20,227 cases, 27.2 per cent of the total. Kidnapping and abduction of women followed, then POCSO cases involving girl victims, then assault on women with intent to outrage modesty, then rape. Uttar Pradesh recorded the highest absolute number among states, 66,396 cases, followed by Maharashtra (47,954), Rajasthan (36,536) and West Bengal (34,360); among union territories, Delhi led with 13,396 cases. Rajasthan again recorded the highest number of rape cases among states, 4,871, followed by Uttar Pradesh (3,209), Maharashtra (3,091) and Madhya Pradesh (3,061).

Source: NCRB, Crime in India 2024. Shares are of the 4,41,534 total; remaining cases fall under other heads.

7.Crimes Against Children and POCSO

While most categories fell or stagnated, crimes against children moved the other way. 1,87,702 crimes against children were registered in 2024, up from 1,77,335 in 2023 and 1,62,449 in 2022, a rise of nearly 6 per cent in a single year. Kidnapping and abduction of children was the single largest category, with 82,847 cases, and cases under the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences (POCSO) Act remained high at 64,966. The national rate of crimes against children stood at 42.3 per lakh child population, with Delhi recording the highest rate among states and union territories at 138.4.

In absolute numbers, Maharashtra reported the highest count among states with 24,171 cases, followed closely by Uttar Pradesh with 22,222. Among metropolitan cities, Delhi again led with 7,662 cases, against Mumbai's 3,374 and Bengaluru's 2,026; Delhi alone registered 5,404 cases of child abduction in 2024, roughly five times Bengaluru's count. Whether the rise reflects higher incidence or better mandatory-reporting under POCSO and the juvenile justice framework, the direction is unambiguous: children are the one large victim group for whom registered crime rose in 2024.

Source: NCRB, Crime in India 2024.

8.Cyber Crime Data: India's Fastest-Growing Offence Category

If the 2024 report has one unambiguous trend, it is cybercrime. 1,01,928 cybercrime cases were registered in 2024, up 17.9 per cent from 86,420 in 2023, the highest on record; the cybercrime rate rose from 6.2 to 7.3 per lakh population. The NCRB counts as cybercrime those offences under the Information Technology Act, the penal code (now BNS) and special laws in which a computer or communication device is the target or the medium of the offence.

The motive profile is dominated by money. Fraud accounted for 72.6 per cent of all cybercrime cases (73,987 of 1,01,928), followed by sexual exploitation (3,190 cases, 3.1 per cent) and extortion (2,536 cases, 2.5 per cent). State-wise, Telangana registered the highest number of cybercrime cases among states, 27,230, followed by Karnataka; Uttar Pradesh's cybercrime rate of 4.6 per lakh was well below the national 7.3. The investigative infrastructure is still catching up: as of the latest Bureau of Police Research and Development count, India had 459 cyber police stations across all states and union territories.

Source: NCRB, Crime in India 2024.

9.State-Wise and City-Wise Indian Crime Data

State-wise comparison is where Indian crime data is most quoted and most misread. The NCRB's own caution deserves to be repeated: states and union territories should not be compared purely on the basis of absolute crime figures, because population size, registration practice and legal enforcement differ. Uttar Pradesh, with a projected 2024 population of about 23.89 crore, naturally tops most absolute counts; on rates, its picture is different. Uttar Pradesh's rate of IPC/BNS crimes stood at about 180 per lakh population in 2024 against a national figure of 252.3; its murder rate (1.3) was below the national murder rate (1.9); its rate of crimes against women (58.0) was below the national 64.6; and its cybercrime rate (4.6) was below the national 7.3. It did, however, record the highest dowry-death rate in the country (1.8) and a rate of crimes against Scheduled Castes (35.6) above the national average (27.7).

Among the larger states, Telangana's total cognisable crime figures rose sharply in 2024, placing it among the states with the highest crime rates per lakh population, while Kerala recorded the highest chargesheeting rate under IPC/BNS crimes at 94.5 per cent, followed by Puducherry (91.0) and West Bengal (90.6). The tables below collect the state-wise and city-wise figures that are most reliably reported for 2024.

Source: NCRB, Crime in India 2024. The table lists the states that lead each measure; it is not a ranking of every state.

Metropolitan cities: Delhi's dominance

Among the nineteen metropolitan cities covered by the report, Delhi leads in every violent-crime category. Its 504 murder cases in 2024 were nearly three times Bengaluru's 176, and its 5,580 kidnapping and abduction cases were three times Mumbai's 1,854. Delhi recorded 1,80,973 theft cases in 2024, roughly 496 every day and 73.3 per cent of all theft cases registered across the nineteen cities; Mumbai followed with 10,854. Delhi's total IPC/BNS registrations fell about 15 per cent to roughly 2.75 lakh cases, without changing its rank among metros. Delhi also recorded the highest organised-crime registrations under the new Section 111 of the BNS (20 cases in the six months it was in force), ahead of Lucknow and Surat (nine each).

Source: NCRB, Crime in India 2024. City figures are for the nineteen metropolitan cities covered by the report.

Other vulnerable groups

Crimes against members of the Scheduled Castes fell 3.6 per cent to 55,698 cases in 2024, and crimes against members of the Scheduled Tribes fell sharply, by 23.1 per cent, to 9,966 cases. Offences against the state rose 6.6 per cent to 5,194 cases, of which 84.6 per cent were registered under the Prevention of Damage to Public Property Act and 12.5 per cent under the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act. Economic offences rose 4.6 per cent to about 2.14 lakh cases. The companion ADSI 2024 report recorded 1,70,746 suicides, including 10,546 persons from the farming sector, and a 50 per cent rise in drug-overdose deaths to 978.

10.How to Read Indian Crime Data the Right Way

Most errors in reporting crime statistics come from a handful of predictable mistakes. The checklist below is the one this office uses before relying on any NCRB figure in a brief, an opinion or a client note.

11.The IPC to Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita Transition

On 1 July 2024, the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita, 2023 replaced the Indian Penal Code, 1860 as India's general penal law, alongside the Bharatiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita (replacing the Code of Criminal Procedure, 1973) and the Bharatiya Sakshya Adhiniyam (replacing the Indian Evidence Act, 1872). The 2024 data year is therefore split: offences registered from 1 January to 30 June 2024 fall under the IPC (19,03,047 cases), and offences registered from 1 July to 31 December 2024 fall under the BNS (16,41,561 cases), together 35.44 lakh penal-code cases for the year.

The NCRB's treatment of the transition is careful and explicit. It collected IPC and BNS crime registration data separately for 2024, published mapping tables showing which BNS section corresponds to which IPC section (murder, for example, moved from Section 302 IPC to Section 103 BNS; cruelty by relatives from Section 498A IPC to Sections 85 and 86 BNS), and introduced entirely new crime heads that have no IPC predecessor. The most prominent of these is organised crime under Section 111 BNS, covering kidnapping, robbery and extortion by syndicates; the metro data already shows Delhi registering 20 such cases in the second half of 2024, the highest among the nineteen cities. Conversely, some IPC offences were removed, merged or reclassified, which is why several heads (hurt being the most visible example) record large movements that partly reflect reclassification rather than pure behavioural change.

For anyone building time series, the practical guidance is simple: treat calendar 2024 as a hybrid year. Whole-year totals for "penal-code crime" (IPC plus BNS) remain broadly comparable with earlier years, but offence-head-level series must be reconciled through the NCRB's own mapping and glossary before any trend is asserted. This caution applies to the murder, rape, dowry-death and kidnapping series used in this article, and to every analysis published anywhere on 2024 data.

Source: NCRB, Crime in India 2024, and the text of the 2023 criminal-law statutes.

12.Beyond the FIR: Chargesheets, Arrests and Convictions

Registration is only the first act of a criminal case, and the NCRB's disposal data is where Indian crime data meets the Indian courts. In 2024, the chargesheeting rate for IPC/BNS crimes was 72.1 per cent, marginally below 2023's 72.7 per cent, while the overall chargesheeting rate for cognisable crimes stood at 80.3 per cent. Kerala recorded the highest IPC/BNS chargesheeting rate (94.5 per cent), followed by Puducherry (91.0) and West Bengal (90.6). Over 26.72 lakh persons were arrested in IPC/BNS cases, over 43.11 lakh were chargesheeted, and over 10.71 lakh were convicted. Under special and local laws, 18.65 lakh persons were arrested, 27.01 lakh chargesheeted and 17.21 lakh convicted.

Two features of these figures deserve emphasis. First, the enormous distance between arrest and conviction: about 10.7 lakh convictions against 26.7 lakh arrests in penal-code cases reflects trials still pending, acquittals, discharges and compounding, and connects directly to the pendency problem documented in our companion analysis of Indian courts data. Second, category-level disposal can be startlingly low: in Delhi, only 8.5 per cent of kidnapping cases were chargesheeted in 2024, a figure that says as much about investigation capacity as about the offence itself.

Source: NCRB, Crime in India 2024. Persons counts exceed case counts because one case may involve several persons, and figures include carry-over cases disposed during 2024.

13.Myths vs Facts About Indian Crime Data

14.Why Indian Crime Data Matters for Citizens

For most readers, Indian crime data is not an abstract statistical exercise. It is the evidence base for decisions that touch daily life: which policing priorities a state funds, where women's safety interventions are concentrated, how cyber-fraud awareness campaigns are targeted, and how courts and commissions audit the system. When the data shows that cruelty by husband or relatives constitutes more than a quarter of all registered crimes against women, that is a direct statement about where legal protection and legal aid are most needed. When cybercrime rises 17.9 per cent in a year while every conventional category falls, that is a signal about where individual precautions (and the law's attention) must move.

The data also matters at the moment a citizen becomes a data point. An FIR is the entry gate to the entire criminal justice system; if registration is refused, the offence will never exist in any future NCRB report, and the complainant's remedies lie in the legal system, not the statistical one. A complaint of a cognisable offence must be registered (the Supreme Court's decision in Lalita Kumari v. State of Uttar Pradesh (2014) made registration of a cognisable offence mandatory), and remedies for refusal range from the superintendent of police to the magistrate under Section 175 of the BNSS (formerly Section 156(3) CrPC) and, in appropriate cases, a writ petition. Our guide on what to do when the police refuse your FIR sets out the full roadmap.

Finally, the data is a check on narratives. Crime statistics are among the most politically charged numbers any government publishes, and the only defence against their misuse is a citizenry that knows how to read them: rates rather than counts, registration rather than incidence, chargesheeting rather than conviction, and vintage rather than assumption. The checklist in section 10 is written for exactly that purpose.

15.Frequently Asked Questions