Why Delhi Cannot Celebrate Its Declining Gender Crime Numbers Yet

The margin of underreporting is especially high for sexual crimes and harassment in public spaces, said Sonali Vyas, the programme head at Safetipin, an organisation focussed on safe and inclusive public spaces. “The police has a tendency to overlook cases of sexual harassment on streets as they do not consider it serious enough to register an FIR,” she explained. Stalking and related crimes are a prime example of all these issues.

Only 1% of victims report sexual violence because of patriarchal attitudes that place the emotional responsibility of such crimes on women, stated the PHFI report. “When a girl or a woman decides to report harassment, the family discourages her. They feel that the family name will be maligned and that the survivor will be shamed. As a result, societies and families start curtailing the rights of women and girls. Such attitudes further discourage women from reporting sexual crimes,” said Supreet. 

In serious sexual offenses like rape, almost 95% of the offenders in Delhi in 2020 were known to the survivors, as per the NCRB data. But sexual harassment, which occurs more frequently and is more prevalent among strangers, hardly gets reported. 

Of the women who had experienced sexual harassment in public spaces and not reported it to the police, 65% cited the frequent occurrence of such cases as reason for not reporting it, found a 2019 report titled “Women and Mobility” by Safetipin. Other reasons for not reporting a crime included lack of trust and faith in the police, being afraid of the police and police inaction, the report said.

“In cases like stalking and voyeurism which are generally considered as the less heinous crimes against women but occur more frequently, the tendency to register such crimes both by the survivor as well as the police is lax. For example, in Delhi in 2020, the total number of cases registered of stalking were 235, which seems like a very small number compared to the incidents that happen in everyday life,” said Supreet. 

Another problem, she said, is that people are not aware of the full cover of gender laws. For instance, staring at women and girls and making lewd comments are punishable offences but the practice is so widespread that few even know that these qualify as crimes. “So regardless of how seamless the laws or systems to report a crime are, if people do not know they can avail these services, the system will not work,” she said.

Further the system is not equipped with the sensitivity to deal with the survivor, Supreet added, pointing to the fact that survivors have to relive the crime several times over when they report it.