327% rise in agrarian riots in 2015, NCRB report shows

Recently released “Crime in India” report has made the following observations on riots in India:

• Incidents of rioting remained almost the same in 2015 as compared to 2014, but as communal riots decreased, big increases were seen in other categories — agrarian, sectarian and student riots and caste conflicts.
• Recorded incidents of agrarian riots jumped 327% from 628 in 2014 to 2,683 in 2015. The number of people arrested increased from 3,540 to 10,353.
• Sectarian riots — defined as violence between sects of the same religion not considering caste conflict — showed a significant jump in incidents and convictions from a low base in 2014. Much of these incidents occurred in Uttar Pradesh.
• There is a decrease in communal riots — from 1,227 in 2014 to 789 in 2015.
• 20% of the overall 65,255 riots were reported in Bihar followed by Maharashtra (8,336) and Uttar Pradesh (6,813).
• Kerala tops the crime rate list, with 16.3 riot cases per lakh people, followed by Bihar (12.9) and Karnataka (10.6).
• More than half of the total 1,960 political incidents occurred in Kerala. Uttar Pradesh had the maximum number of caste conflicts (724) followed by Tamil Nadu (426).
• Chennai recorded the lowest rate of total crimes among major cites (154.3 per 1 lakh population). Among all cities, only Surat (86.9), Kannur and Dhanbad had better rates.
• The number of people arrested for student riots (3,600) increased – more than double compared to that in 2014 (1,474). The incidents of student riots increased by 85%, from 261 to 485.
• Kerala is the hotbed of political riots in the country with more than half (1,031) of the overall 1960 incidents.
• More than half of the student riots reported in 2015 took place in Uttar Pradesh and Kerala.
• Reported cases on rape and assault on women showed only marginal change from 2014. Rape cases decreased by 5.7% while assault cases went up by merely 0.22%. (In 2014- 36375 cases , In 2015-34651)