Complaints against police and underworld as well as those related to women, service matters and jails dominate the list of petitions received by National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) in the past six years, the Ministry of Home Affairs said on Wednesday.
The latest statistics also showed that the rights body have received complaints against educational institutions in private and public sector in the past two fiscals -- 466 and 1,112 -- while previously such petitions had not reached the NHRC.
The information was part of the written reply tabled by Minister of State for Home G Kishan Reddy to questions raised by Congress MP Rajmani Patel in Rajya Sabha.
According to statistics, NHRC received a total of 5.23 lakh complaints between 2015-16 and 2020-21 till February 28 with Uttar Pradesh topping the list accounting for 2.03 lakh cases. In 2020-21 too, UP topped the list with 27,958 complaints followed by Delhi (5,461), Tamil Nadu (4,248) and Bihar (3,517).
Karnataka had 979 cases in 2015-16 followed by 1,434, 883, 1,384 and 741 in the next four fiscals. In 2020-21, there were 841 complaints from the south Indian state.
An analysis of the NHRC statistics showed that there were 1.45 lakh complaints against police between 2015-16 and 2020-21 till February 28, the highest among 28 categories listed by the Ministry of Home Affairs.
The highest number of complaints against police was in 2015-16 when the NHRC received 35,533 and there was a decrease in 2016-17 (27,845) and 2017-18 (26,391). However, 2018-19 saw a slight increase to 27,492 only to dip in the next fiscal to 16,286 and to 11,955 in 2020-21 till February 28.
Complaints about women came second with 41,474 petitions in the past six fiscals -- 8105, 7,413, 7,459, 7,842, 6,791 and 3,864 respectively.
Petitions related to service matters also reached the NHRC in large numbers -- 29,495 -- followed by those against mafia/underworld 29,444.
When it comes to human rights violations by mafia/underworld, there were 5,871 such petitions in 2015-16. This declined to 4,853 in 2016-17 and 3,683 in 2017-18 but rose substantially to 5,183 in 2018-19 and 5,457 in 2019-20. In 2020-21, there were 4,397 such cases till February 28.