Crime in India

**Crime in India** is very common and happens in many different ways.  Along with violent crimes (like homicide, robbery, and assault), and property crimes (like burglary, theft, motor vehicle theft, and arson), there are major problems with organized crime, the illegal drug trade, arms trafficking, corruption, and many other forms of crime.  The most common types of crimes in India are listed below.

## Organized crime

Organized crime is planned and done by groups of people.  Their goals are to gain power and make money in Illegal ways.  Common organized crimes in India include:
- Drug trafficking (moving and selling illegal drugs)
- Gunrunning (getting illegal guns, sneaking them into the country, and selling them)
- Money laundering
- Extortion (telling a person that he has to pay money, or something bad will happen to him, his business, or his family)
- Murder for hire (killing someone for pay)
- Fraud
- Human trafficking (tricking or kidnapping people, usually children or young women, into becoming slaves)
- Poaching (killing plants or animals that are illegal to kill, then selling them)
Many criminal organizations also commit these crimes:
- Black marketing (trading or selling things on the _black market_, which is illegal)
- Political violence (for example, trying to hurt or scare political candidates who they dislike)
- Religious violence (hurting or scaring other people because they are a different religion)
- Terrorism, including the 1993 Bombay bombings, 2006 Mumbai train bombings and the 2008 Mumbai attacks
- Abduction (kidnapping)

## Illegal drug trade

India is located between the Golden Crescent (made of Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Iran) and the Golden Triangle (made of Myanmar, Thailand, and Laos).  The Golden Crescent and the Golden Triangle are the two biggest makers of opium in Asia.  Their opium-making is secret and illegal.  Because of India's location, a lot of this illegal opium is trafficked (snuck illegally) through India's borders.

India is the world's largest maker of legal opium.  But its opium gets diverted (taken away by drug traffickers) to other countries where opium and heroin are illegal.

India is a common starting point for drug traffickers who take heroin on ships from  Afghanistan and Pakistan, and from  Myanmar, Laos, and Thailand.  The heroin is then smuggled from Pakistan and Myanmar, with some heroin also shipped through Nepal.  Most heroin shipped from India goes to Europe. There have been reports of heroin smuggled from Mumbai to Nigeria to get the drugs to more countries.

In Maharashtra, Mumbai is an important centre where people sell heroin.  The most commonly used drug in Mumbai is "Indian heroin" (called _desi mal_ by the local population).  Both public transportation (road and rail transportation) and private transportation are used for this drug trade.

The Government of India has tried a few ways of fighting drug trafficking in the country.  India is a party to (meaning it signed onto and agreed to follow):
- The Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs (1961) (today, the word narcotic usually means "illegal drugs")
- The Convention on Psychotropic Substances (1971) ("psychotropic substances" are drugs that change the way the brain works; this causes changes in how a person feels, what they think is real, and how conscious they are)
- The Protocol Amending the Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs (1972) (a change or update to the original Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs)
- The United Nations Convention Against Illicit Traffic in Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances (1988) (a treaty, or agreement, among most of the countries in the United Nations, and some other countries; its goal was to help enforce the Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs and the Convention on Psychotropic Substances)

## Arms trafficking

According to a report published together by Oxfam, Amnesty International, and the International Action Network on Small Arms in 2006, there are around 40 million illegal small arms in India.  This would mean that India had over half of the small arms in the entire world (the world had 75 million, according to the report).

Most of the illegal small arms end up in the states of Bihar, Chhattisgarh, Uttar Pradesh, Jharkhand, Orissa and Madhya Pradesh.  In India, a used AK-47 costs $3,800 on the illegal black market.  But a large amount of illegal small arms are made in illegal arms factories in Uttar Pradesh and Bihar, and sold on the black market for as little as $5.08.

Chinese pistols are in demand in the illegal small arms market in India because they are easy to get and cheaper. This creates a major problem for the states of Bihar, Uttar Pradesh, Jharkhand, Chhattisgarh, Orissa, Maharashtra, West Bengal, Karnataka and Andhra Pradesh.  These states are affected by Naxalism.  Naxalites are groups of Communist guerrilla fighters in India.  Many Chinese pistols, AK-47s, and M-16 rifles are smuggled into India through the border between India and Nepal.  These weapons are then used by the Naxalites, who have ties to Maoists in Nepal.

## Poaching and wildlife trafficking

Illegal wildlife trade in India has increased.  There are laws against killing some animals, taking rare plants, and smuggling them into other countries.  But a report published by the Environmental Investigation Agency  in 2004 said that more traders of wildlife skins go to India than any other country.  Between 1994 and 2003, there were 784 cases where the skins of tiger
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**SOURCE: National Crime Records Bureau**

## Crime by area

Different places in India have different amounts and types of crime.  For example:

- In 2006, the highest crime rate was reported in the city of Pondicherry (447.7%) for crimes under Indian Penal Code. This is 2.7 times the national crime rate of 167.7%. Among states in India, Kerala reported the highest crime rate at 312.5%.
- About 34% (one out of three) IPC crimes in India's very large cities happened in only three of those cities: Delhi (16.2%), Mumbai (9.5%), and Bangalore (8.1%).
- Of the 35 very large cities in India, Indore reported the highest overall crime rate (769.1%).  The second- and third-highest crime rates were from Bhopal (719.5%) and Jaipur (597.1%).
- Some cities had higher rates of violent crime than the whole country of India.  India's national violent crime rate was 18.4%.  Jammu and Kashmir's violent crime rate was 33.7%; Manipur's was 33.0%; Assam's was 30.4%; and both Daman and Diu's and Pondicherry's were 29.4%
- Uttar Pradesh reported the highest rate of violent crimes.  Violent crimes in Uttar Pradesh made up 12.1% of the total violent crimes in all of India (24,851 out of 2,05,656).  Violent crimes in Bihar made up 11.8% of violent crimes in India. (24,271 out of 2,05,6556).
- Among India's 35 very big cities, rapes in Delhi made up 31.2% of total rape cases in the 35 cities (533 out of 1,706).  Madhya Pradesh has reported the highest number of rape cases (2,900), making up 15.0% of the rape cases reported in all of India.
- Uttar Pradesh reported 16.9% (5,480 out of 32,481) of India's murder cases, and 18.4% (4,997 out of 27,230) of the country's attempted murder cases.