Mumbai: The Supreme Court (SC) in its recent judgment, that no immediate arrests should be made in cases registered under section 498 A of the IPC, has taken into consideration records of the National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) which show that between 2005 and 2015, conviction rates in cases under section 498 A have fallen down continuously.
According to NCRB data, conviction rate under section 498 A is among the lowest of all IPC crimes.
The SC in its judgment said that the district level family welfare committee (FWC) would look into complaints of domestic violence and file its report within a month. The SC said that no arrests would be made before the report was submitted by the FWC. The court however clarified that these rules would not apply to offences involving physical injury or death. As per NCRB data, the number of pending cases increased to 4.77 lakh by the end of 2015, which was as low as 2.06 lakh at the end of 2006. This was an increase of more than 130 per cent of pending cases in 10 years.
The data also showed that conviction in such cases was between 6,000 and 8,000 in each of these 10 years, and that the number of acquittals increased consistently from a minimum 24,000 to 40,000 each year during this period of time. Apart from this, the number of cases withdrawn by complainants since 2012 was more than the number of convictions each year.
