Bhubaneswar: Odisha lags behind in the country in terms of conviction rate in Indian Penal Code (IPC) cases. At the national level, the conviction rate in such cases is 54.2 per cent, while in Odisha it is only 11.9 per cent. This information has been revealed in the recently released NCRB report of the Ministry of Home Affairs of the Union Government.
In the year 2022, 18,14,676 IPC cases were disposed of in courts across the country, out of which 5,88,736 accused escaped and in 8,14,669 cases, the accused were punished. On the other hand, 28,612 IPC cases were disposed of in Odisha in the same year, out of which 24,189 have been dropped while only 3,271 cases have been punished.
Odisha lags behind among various states in terms of punishment in IPC cases. Odisha has a conviction rate of 11.9 per cent, followed by Mizoram (95.3 per cent), Andhra Pradesh (64.4 per cent), Bihar (59.1 per cent), Chhattisgarh (53.6 per cent), Kerala (86.4 per cent), Nagaland (63.7 per cent), Rajasthan (51.7 per cent), Telangana (57.3 per cent), Tamil Nadu (56.2 per cent) and Uttarakhand (55.2 per cent). The conviction rate in IPC cases in Assam is 13.1 per cent, followed by Gujarat at 29.7 per cent and West Bengal at 23.4 per cent.
Odisha is also far behind in the case of disposal of IPC cases. According to the report, in the year 2022, 96.8 per cent of the IPC cases that were pending in Odisha were pending in the following year, which means only 3.2 per cent of the IPC criminal cases were disposed of in our state in the same year. At the national level, the inflation rate stands at 10.6 per cent. However, states like West Bengal, Uttarakhand, Manipur, Arunachal Pradesh, Bihar are also lagging behind Odisha in case resolution.
According to data provided by the Union Government in Parliament, more than 5 crore cases are pending in law courts across the country, out of which more than 3.15 crore are criminal cases. Similarly, in Odisha, more than 12 lakh criminal cases are pending in the courts, the state government said in the assembly.
While both the central and State Governments have been spending huge sums of money on courts, kutcheris, jails and police administrations through extensive planning to control crime, legal experts admit that crime is on the rise due to low conviction rates and delays in trials. How the conviction rate in criminal cases in Odisha will be high is now a big challenge for the administration.