What other records add

What women tell a household survey

The National Family Health Survey asks women directly about violence, in their homes and in private. Its fifth round was carried out across every state between 2019 and 2021. It is the best measure there is of violence that never reaches a police station.

Spousal violence is asked of ever-married women aged 18 to 49 and covers the current or most recent husband. Chandigarh and Lakshadweep had too few women in the sample for a help-seeking figure, and the figures for Ladakh, Goa, Sikkim and Dadra and Nagar Haveli and Daman and Diu rest on 25 to 49 women and are imprecise.

IIPS and ICF, NFHS-5 India report, table 15.13, p. 668, and the DHS Program API for state help-seeking and sexual violence.

Complaints to the National Commission for Women

Any woman can complain to the National Commission for Women, online or by post, whether or not she has gone to the police. The Commission publishes how many complaints it received, from which state and about what.

These are complaints a woman chose to send to one national body. Uttar Pradesh sends half or more of them every year, which says more about who uses the Commission than about where crime happens. In 2024 the Commission changed its list of categories partway through the year, so categories in 2024 cannot be compared with earlier years.

National Commission for Women, Statistical overview of received complaints, calendar years 2020 to 2024, retrieved 9 October 2026.

Women who died by suicide

NCRB's report on accidental deaths and suicides counts every suicide police record, with the person's sex and occupation. Housewives are the largest single group of women in it every year. The report does not say why any of them died, and a suicide is a crime only when someone is shown to have abetted it.

Some state figures move in ways the report does not explain. Odisha recorded 2,691 housewives in 2022 against 377 the year before, and Puducherry recorded none in 2020, 2021 and 2022 while recording more than a hundred female suicides each year. They are shown as NCRB printed them.

NCRB, Accidental Deaths and Suicides in India, 2020 to 2024, table 2.7. If you are struggling, Tele-MANAS is free and open all day and night on 14416.

Women in the police

The Bureau of Police Research and Development counts every state's police force each year, on 1 January. Women officers matter here because the law requires a woman officer to record a woman's statement in a sexual offence.

These figures are for 1 January 2024, the latest edition this site has found. Women police stations are counted as the edition prints them, and Maharashtra is printed as not available.

BPR&D, Data on Police Organisations as on 1 January 2024, tables 2.1.2, 2.1.3, 3.2.1, 5.1.4 and 6.2.4, and the editions as on 1 January 2023 and 2020.

Fast track special courts

Since October 2019 the central government has paid part of the cost of special courts that hear only rape and POCSO cases. Some of them hear POCSO cases alone. The Ministry of Law and Justice reports their numbers to Parliament from what the High Courts tell it.

The conviction rate is printed as an average for each state, and the answer does not say what it is a share of. The time to clear the cases is worked out here from the 2025 pace and assumes no new case is filed, so it is the shortest it could be.

Rajya Sabha starred question 56, 23 July 2026, and unstarred question 749, 5 February 2026, answered by the Ministry of Law and Justice. Lok Sabha unstarred question 2215, 1 August 2025.

Cases filed by women in district courts

The National Judicial Data Grid shows, day by day, the cases pending in every district and taluka court, and how many of them were filed by a woman. Most crimes against women are prosecuted by the state on a police report, so the woman is not the one who filed them and they are not in this count. What it does show is how many women are waiting on a court for something they asked it to decide, civil or criminal.

This is a snapshot taken on 9 October 2026 and changes every day. It covers district and taluka courts only. The grid does not say how it records whether a litigant is a woman, and cases where that was not entered cannot be in the count.

National Judicial Data Grid, district and taluka courts, pending dashboard, 9 October 2026.

The Nirbhaya Fund

The central government set up the Nirbhaya Fund in 2013, after the gang rape and murder in Delhi in December 2012. It pays for one stop centres, the women's helpline, the emergency response system, forensic laboratories, the fast track special courts and safe city projects.

The Ministry reports money released and money utilised as one figure for each state, so how much of what was released has been spent cannot be told from it. The state figures add to less than the national figure because some projects are run by central ministries and are not counted by state.

Ministry of Women and Child Development, Rajya Sabha unstarred questions 2873 and 2870, 12 August 2026.

Legislators with declared cases

Every candidate for Parliament or a state assembly must list, in a sworn affidavit, the criminal cases pending against them. The Association for Democratic Reforms reads these affidavits and counts the sitting members who declared cases of crimes against women. Women on Record records the counts only and names no one.

These are cases the members declared, all of them pending when the affidavit was filed. None is a conviction, and the present state of each case is not known. A member with several cases is counted once. A state with no such member has no figure.

ADR and National Election Watch, sitting MPs and MLAs with declared cases related to crimes against women, 21 August 2024, and the analysis of sitting MLAs of 17 March 2025.

The context data

• Context workbookEight other sources, from the household survey to election affidavits, one sheet each, with the source, table and page on every row.
• Context CSVThe same rows as the context workbook, in one file, with a column that names the source.