Crime against women depicts upward trend in Punjab
ISLAMABAD: The crime against the women has shown upward trend in Punjab, as 21 percent increase was seen in officially-recorded crimes in February 2011 compared to January 2011. A total of 578 crimes against women were recorded in January 2011, which mounted to 700 in February, 2011.
The offices of District Police Officers (DPOs) in 25 out of 28 monitored districts of Punjab have reported registration of 700 FIRs of crimes that targeted women in February 2011, while in January the police administration of 23 out of 29 observed districts in the province reported 578 crimes against women, said a monthly crime watch issued by Free and Fair Election Network (FAFEN) here on Friday. Crime statistics were collected by FAFEN Governance Monitors from offices of DPOs in a total of 69 districts across the country.
The report revealed that the FAFEN governance monitors for collection of the crime data have visited the DPO offices of 28 districts in Punjab, 18 districts in KP, 16 in Sindh, six in Balochistan and one district in Islamabad Capital Territory. The FAFEN crime monitor gave the nation-wide data on crime against the women saying that police in 33 out of 69 observed districts recorded 853 crimes against women. Four in every five cases of crimes against women were actually recorded in Punjab districts.
Crimes against women include honour killings, the forcible outraging of a women’s modesty, compelling a woman to marry, rape, offences related to marriage law and insults to a woman’s modesty, the report revealed. The FAFEN crime monitor stated that this was a significant increase on Punjab’s 67 per cent of crimes against women in January, even though only two more districts of Punjab shared information about these crimes (25) than had done in January (23).
Monitored districts of Sindh, on the other hand, halved their share of crimes against women from 24 percent to 12 percent – despite the number of districts monitored in Sindh falling by only one fourth, from 12 to 9. Five percent of crimes against women were registered in KP, 0.3 percent in ICT and 0.2 percent in Balochistan. Lahore district, with 158 FIRs of crimes against women, displaced Faisalabad district as the district recording the most crimes against women.
In fact, considerably higher crime reportage was observed in Punjab in all major categories of crime. Punjab’s 28 monitored districts (of 69 nation-wide or 40 percent of total districts sharing caseload) accounted for a disproportionately large 20,645 (80 percent) of the total 25,757 registered FIRs of all crimes. Punjab’s share increased by four percentage from January’s figure. Sindh’s share decreased from 13 percent in January to 10 percent in February. KPP registered 8 percent of the total FIRs in February, while Balochistan and ICT reported 1 percent each.
Approximately 65 percent of the total crimes of physical harm were reported in Punjab. Sindh followed with 19 percent and KPP with 13 percent. Only 3 percent of crimes of physical harm were recorded in monitored districts of Balochistan, and 1 percent in ICT. Most of the crimes against property, 84 percent, were also reported in Punjab. This was followed by 12 percent in Sindh, and 1 percent each in ICT, KPP and Balochistan. Similarly, the observed districts of Punjab, Sindh, KPP and Balochistan accounted for 91 percent, 7 percent, 1percent and 0.4 percent respectively of the total 2,574 crimes of threat and fraud.
Accordingly, four of the five districts that reported the most crimes were in Punjab. Lahore district came top, with a huge 23 percent of all recorded crimes in monitored districts being reported in this district alone. This was almost twice the figure for the district in second place, Faisalabad, which recorded 13 percent of crimes in monitored districts. Multan followed with 5 percent, and Rahimyar Khan with 4.1 percent. Karachi district of Sindh came fifth, with 3.9 percent of FIRs in monitored districts.
Source: Business Recorder
Date:5/14/2011
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