Cases of crime against children closed by police; Hyderabad in dubious list

HYDERABAD: Hyderabad has the dubious distinction of being the metropolitan city with the third highest number of cases related to the crime against children being closed by the police, even without taking the accused to court.

Among the 19 metropolitan cities in the country with more than 20 lakh population that have been assessed by the National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB), Hyderabad police had closed 89 cases due to insufficient evidence or without any clues. This is an alarming 14.7 per cent of the total 607 cases closed in 2021, according to NCRB’s Crime in India -2021 report.

Delhi topped the list with 983 cases, followed by Lucknow 424 cases.

In 2021 overall, Telangana police disposed of 5,817 cases, of which 184 cases were disposed of ‘though true but insufficient evidence or untraced or no clue’. Police dropped 207 cases during the investigation process. Although 417 cases were closed, they turned out to be false cases during investigations while 595 cases were closed because of factual mistakes of fact or law or a civil dispute during investigation.

A total of 5,667 cases of crime against children were reported in Telangana in the year under review. While police filed charge sheets in 75.9 per cent of the cases, 2,787 cases of crime against children were pending by 2021-end. Telangana’s pendency is at 32.4 per cent as against the national average of 33.4 per cent.