Cybercrimes against children see 32% rise in a year, NCRB report shows

Mumbai: The most glaring area of concern with child safety and protection is the fact that children are gradually becoming more vulnerable to cybercrimes and allied threats to online security of the younger generations, the NCRB Report 2022 reveals.

Going by the numbers of the recently published report, in 2022, the total number of cases where children have been victims of cybercrimes stands at 1,823, posting a 32 per cent increase upon the previous year’s data which stood at 1,376.

According to Puja Marwaha, CEO, Child Rights and You, what worries the most is that children are no longer safe from criminals on the prowl around online spaces.

“The nature of cybercrimes committed against children included cyber pornography/hosting or publishing obscene sexual materials depicting children (1171 cases), cyber stalking/bullying (158 cases), and other cyber crimes against children (416 cases),” she said.

“The fear that the Covid pandemic may have left children far more exposed to various online education and other entertainment platforms – which in effect tended to increase risks for children manifested at multiple levels – has been vindicated by the current NCRB data. While keeping children away from the online platforms is certainly not an option, we must have more stringent mechanisms to track down the offenders and sanitise the space for the younger generations,” Puja added.

Overall, crime against children witnessed a remarkable increase of 8.73 per cent with the total number of crimes committed against them standing at 1,62,449; while in the previous year, the number stood at 1,49,404 – an in-depth analysis by CRY points out.

The analysis further reveals that in 2022, over 445 crimes were committed against children each day in the country, translating to more than 18 crimes taking place every hour, on average. The rate of cognisable crimes (The ‘rate of crime’ is population adjusted – it gives the number of crimes per every one lakh population of children) against children increased to 36.6 in 2022 from 33.6 in 2021.

Further analysis of the decadal trend points to a worrying upward trajectory where crimes against children in India increased steeply by 179 per cent in 2013-2022. During the same period, the number of overall crimes in India decreased by 12.3 per cent.