Data and method
Where the numbers come from, and how to use them
The data, free to use
The files below hold every number on this site, with the NCRB table it came from, the section of law it falls under, and a note wherever a figure needs one. You may use them freely if you cite NCRB and link to this site.
- Excel workbookThe workbook has an About sheet, a codebook, the sources, every row of data, and one sheet for each crime with states in rows and years in columns.
- CSVThe CSV has one row for each state, year, crime and measure, and holds the same rows as the workbook.
- CodebookThe codebook explains every column, crime code, measure and flag.
- 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.
The figures are NCRB's. The compilation, the codes and the notes are released under CC BY 4.0, and the code is released under the MIT licence.
Read this before quoting a number
- These figures count the cases that police recorded, which is a smaller number than the crimes that took place. The National Family Health Survey asks women directly, and in its 2015-16 round 77 per cent of women who had experienced physical or sexual violence had never sought help or told anyone about it (NFHS-4 India report, p. 572).
- NCRB counts each FIR once, under the most serious offence in it. A rape that ended in a murder is therefore counted once, as murder with rape.
- Rape of girls under 18 is mostly booked under the POCSO Act. The rape figures and the POCSO figures are separate series and should be read together.
- From 1 July 2024 offences were booked under the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita. NCRB reports 2024 under both codes, and this site adds the two together. Where NCRB split one older heading into several, the parts are added back so that the years can be compared, and each such sum is named in the dataset.
- Dadra and Nagar Haveli and Daman and Diu merged in January 2020, and before that NCRB printed them separately, so this site adds the two together for 2014 to 2019. Ladakh became a union territory in October 2019, and NCRB counted it with Jammu and Kashmir until its 2019 report, so Ladakh has figures from 2020 and Jammu and Kashmir includes Ladakh before then.
- NCRB changed its crime headings in 2017. Before then, its total for crimes against women left out POCSO, cyber crime, trafficking and acid attacks, and in 2016 its rape figure included POCSO cases booked with section 376. The charts on this site therefore start in 2017, and only the India lines for headings that NCRB defined the same way reach back to 2014. Every earlier figure is in the downloads, under a code of its own wherever its definition differs.
- The population behind the rates changed twice. NCRB used estimates based on the 2001 Census for 2016 and 2017, the projections of November 2019 for 2018 and 2019, and the projections of July 2020 from 2020 onward. A rate can move a little between those years for that reason alone.
Sources and method
Where every number comes from
National Crime Records Bureau, Crime in India, Volume 1, for 2017 to 2024: tables 2A.3 (murder victims by sex), 3A.1 to 3A.3 (crimes against women and rape victims by age), 3A.5 to 3A.8 (police and court disposal). For 2016, the same tables in the complete 2016 publication. For 2014 and 2015, tables 5.2, 5.3, 5.5 and 5.6 and table 3.3 (murder victims). Every file is listed below with its checksum.
How it is checked
A script read every table directly from NCRB's PDFs. For every count, the states must add up to NCRB's own total for states, the union territories to its total for union territories, and the two together to the all-India total, with states and union territories as NCRB drew them in each year (28 and 8 from 2020, 29 and 7 before). They do in every table and every year. The yearly all-India totals were also matched against the totals NCRB prints in table 3A.1, or table 5.1 for 2014 and 2015.
No one is named
This site holds counts only. It does not name, picture or describe any survivor, including in the cases that started the protests. Section 72 of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita, earlier section 228A of the IPC, makes disclosing a rape survivor's identity an offence.