Women’s safety in the domestic, public and increasingly digital spheres remains one of India’s most urgent and complex public policy challenges in 2025. Despite decades of legislative reforms, expanded police infrastructure and increased public awareness, violence against women persists in many forms, ranging from domestic abuse and sexual harassment to trafficking, cyber harassment and workplace exploitation. These crimes are not isolated acts but are embedded in broader structures of gender inequality, social stigma and unequal access to justice. As India debates legal safeguards and governance reforms, official crime data provides an important, though incomplete, window into the scale and nature of the problem.Every reported crime has a background story that is never included in the case file. Before an FIR, there is a moment of doubt about what to say, who to trust and what might happen. For countless women in India, that moment ends in silence.That silence is actually fraught with a lot of calculations – the fear that people may not believe you, family telling them to “let it go” because of the risk of retribution or to protect family honor, the cost of a legal battle that can last for years, and the tacit understanding that the path to justice, even if promised, may be unforgivable. For most women, security is not a given. This is worked on every day – by calculating which paths to avoid, staying calm in unfamiliar places, adjusting behavior, and living with the losses that feel easier to manage than to report.
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In 2025, crime data will remain the main way to assess women’s safety in India. These numbers shape headlines, policy debates, and official claims of progress. But they only reflect cases that fall into the criminal justice system. Far more experiences remain off the record – abuse within homes, harassment in public spaces, online threats – incidents that never become complaints because the cost of speaking out is felt to outweigh the harm.
What the numbers show – and what they don’t
The most recent comprehensive data from the National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) is for 2022. Since then, no complete official dataset is available, leaving a gap in understanding recent trends. In 2022, 4,45,256 cases of crimes against women were reported in India, showing an increase of 4 percent over the previous year and an average of 51 complaints were registered every hour. The national crime rate stood at 66.4 cases per lakh women. Although these numbers point to the persistence of gender-based violence, they also highlight sharp regional disparities. The Union Territory of Delhi recorded a crime rate of 144.4, twice the national average, while Haryana (118.7) and Telangana (117.6) also recorded significantly higher rates. Such variations raise important questions: Do higher numbers indicate greater prevalence of crime, better reporting mechanisms, or a combination of the two?However, official statistics only record those incidents that involve the formal criminal justice system. A large body of evidence shows that a large proportion of violence against women goes unreported, particularly when it occurs within households or involves perpetrators known to the survivor. Data from the National Family Health Survey-5 (2019-21) presents a completely different picture of women’s life experiences.
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According to the survey, almost one in three married women in India – 32 per cent – have faced physical, sexual or emotional violence at the hands of their husbands at some point in their lives, while 6.1 per cent reported experiencing sexual violence. The contradiction between these prevalence-based findings and police-recorded crime statistics highlights the persistent gap between reality and reporting.This gap is shaped by several factors: fear of retribution, social pressure to maintain family honor, lack of trust in law enforcement, lengthy judicial processes, and economic dependence. In rural areas and among marginalized communities, these barriers are often exacerbated by limited access to police stations, legal aid and survivor support services. Even in urban settings, where reporting may be relatively high, cybercrime and workplace harassment often fall through regulatory cracks or are addressed through informal mechanisms rather than criminal complaints.In 2025, crime data remains an indispensable tool for understanding trends, allocating resources, and holding institutions accountable. Yet numbers alone cannot capture the full extent of women’s vulnerability, resilience, or the systemic failures that allow violence to persist. This feature examines what India’s crime statistics reveal about women’s safety – and, equally importantly, what they leave out, by juxtaposing official data with social realities, institutional barriers and the voices often missing from the record.
Reporting vs reality: When FIR reflects reach, not incident
An increase in the number of First Information Reports (FIRs) filed does not automatically indicate an increase in crime; In many cases, this reflects changes in reporting behaviour, policing practices and legal awareness. This distinction is particularly important when interpreting data on crimes against women, where historically under-reporting has long concealed the true scale of violence.A major factor behind the high FIR numbers is better access to the criminal justice system. Supreme Court State-level women’s help desks, online complaint portals and dedicated women’s police stations, as well as decisions mandating mandatory registration of FIRs for cognizable offences, have reduced procedural barriers that previously discouraged survivors from coming forward. In such contexts, rising FIR numbers may indicate an institutional reaction rather than an actual increase in incidents.Changes in social attitudes also play a role. Widespread public discussion about gender-based violence through media coverage, civil society advocacy, and movements demanding accountability has contributed to increased awareness of legal rights among women.
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Also, increased FIR registration does not eliminate concerns of under-reporting. Crimes such as domestic violence, marital sexual abuse, cyber harassment and trafficking are significantly underrepresented in police data. In many cases, pressure from families or local authorities leads to complaints being withdrawn, informally “disposed of”, or never converted into an FIR. Moreover, higher FIR volume is not always matched by proportionate improvement in investigations, charge-sheets or convictions, raising questions about whether the system is equipped to effectively handle over-reporting.The recent findings of the National Annual Report and Index on Women Safety, released by the National Commission for Women (NCW), underline the limitations of relying solely on official crime statistics to assess women’s safety. Based on a survey of 12,770 women in 31 cities, the report documents unreported harassment, everyday experiences and perceptions of safety that are rarely recorded in police records. India received a national safety score of 65 percent, with six in ten women saying they felt safe in their city. However, 40 percent still described themselves as “not so safe” or “unsafe,” revealing a significant perception gap.
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The data shows that while educational institutions are considered relatively safe by 86 percent of respondents during the day, the sense of safety diminishes sharply at night and in off-campus locations. The survey also found that 7 percent of women experienced harassment in public places in 2024, with this figure rising to 14 percent among women under 24, identifying young women as a particularly vulnerable group. Importantly, the report highlights widespread under-reporting, with nearly two-thirds of harassment incidents never formally reported, suggesting that NCRB figures represent only a fraction of the problem. Neighborhoods (38 percent) and public transportation (29 percent) emerged as the most cited harassment hotspots. Women’s responses to harassment varied widely: 28 percent confronted the harasser, 25 percent left the area, and only 20 percent contacted authorities, reflecting low confidence in institutional redress. In fact, only one in three victims lodged a formal complaint, pointing to a lack of trust in policing and complaint mechanisms and reinforcing the gap between lived experience and the crime recorded.
The violence that never reaches the police
For many survivors of violence, the decision to report a crime is determined less by the social and institutional costs of speaking out than by the seriousness of the crime. Policing structures, patriarchal norms and constant pressure from families and communities combine to create formidable barriers to reporting, especially in cases involving sexual violence, domestic abuse or harassment by known perpetrators. While the legal framework mandates registration of complaints, the lived experience of engaging with the criminal justice system often deters victims from coming forward in the first place.Negotiations with the police remain a key point of confrontation. Survivors often cite fear of being disbelieved, having questions raised about their character, or being pressured to compromise, rather than filing a formal complaint. In cases of domestic violence or sexual harassment, women are often encouraged to deal with matters in private spaces, reflecting deeply embedded attitudes that prioritize social harmony over individual justice. Procedural barriers, such as repeated visits to police stations, insensitive interrogation, or delays in filing first information reports, discourage reporting, especially for women with limited mobility, financial dependence, or caregiving responsibilities.
Policing, patriarchy, and pressure
Patriarchal expectations within families and communities add another layer of pressure. Survivors may be warned that reporting the violence will cause embarrassment, harm marriage prospects, or invite social ostracism. Intimate partner violence, economic dependence, and concerns about the welfare of children often force women to endure abuse in silence. Young women in particular face intense scrutiny, with families often prioritizing “reputation” over accountability, discouraging formal complaints even when the harms are severe.
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These pressures are exacerbated by structural weaknesses in survivor support systems.Together, policing practices, patriarchal control, and social pressure create an environment where silence feels safer than disclosure. As a result, official crime data captures only a small part of women’s experiences, concealing the depth of violence that shapes everyday life.
Statistics and silence: what trauma goes undocumented
Crime data are designed to count incidents, not to measure the enduring burden of trauma or the complex realities of existence. While statistics may indicate how many cases are reported, recorded, or prosecuted, they remain largely silent on what impact violence has on women’s bodies, minds, livelihoods, and relationships long after the incident. The consequences of abuse, fear, anxiety, depression, disrupted education or employment, and fractured social relationships rarely appear in official records, even though these consequences often shape the survivor’s life more deeply than the crime itself.The numbers also fail to capture unequal paths to survival. For many women, carrying on with daily life involves constant negotiation: avoiding certain routes, quitting jobs, changing schools, or living in unsafe homes due to financial dependence or lack of shelter. These acts of adaptation and endurance are invisible in crime statistics, which treat incidents as isolated events rather than ongoing experiences. A closed case or withdrawn complaint may indicate a resolution on paper, but it often hides unresolved damages or forced settlements.Equally absent from the data are the cumulative effects of repeated low-level violence, verbal abuse, threats, stalking and digital harassment, which may not meet reporting limitations but are increasingly eroding a sense of safety and autonomy. Crime statistics can show whether violence has been accounted for, but not whether dignity has been restored. Survivor-centric approaches, without incorporating trauma-informed indicators and long-term outcomes, reduce data risk reducing individual suffering to an abstract total, obscuring both the costs of violence and the resilience required to live with it.
