A day after the National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) released data for 2020, the Indian National Congress, the main opposition in India, has slammed the "BJP's politics of polarisation and hate" for a 96% jump in communal riots in India over the past several years.
On Thursday, the national spokesperson for Congress, Dr Shama Mohamed, said that the 50% increase in caste riots in the country in the past year has demonstrated how the politics of hate "is showing its deadly effects on the fabric of society".
On Wednesday, the NCRB released a report called "Crime in India 2020" that portrayed startling crime patterns.
A total of 50,291 cases of crimes against Scheduled Castes were registered, showing an increase of 9.4% over 2019.
Though cases of kidnapping and abduction went down by over 19% last year, at least 77 rapes were reported every day from across the country along with 80 murders on a daily basis.
As many as 371,503 cases of crime against women were reported from across the country last year which is down from the 405,326 recorded in 2019. The state of Rajasthan reported the most incidences of rape last year: 5,310.
Of the total crimes against women last year, 111,549 were under the category "cruelty by husband or relatives". India also recorded 6,966 cases of dowry deaths last year.
The report says that due to the complete lockdown imposed by the federal government in response to COVID-19 from March 25 of last year, the number of cases registered for crime against women, children, and senior citizens, theft, burglary, robbery, and dacoity, among others, dropped by 200,000.