Guwahati: Nearly 13,000 women have been raped in the last eight years in Assam, official sources said.
State Home Department officials said 12,857 women were raped between 2005 and May 2013 and 59 of them were killed after rape.
Of the 8,181 cases filed against rape, 76 per cent of them were acted upon with 12,216 people arrested for committing the crime, the officials said.
The reasons for increase in crimes against women were attributed to rising population, social and family tension, gender discrimination, poverty, lack of job opportunity and insufficient manpower in the law enforcement agencies.
Atrocity against women were not only limited to rape, it also included torture for dowry which claimed the lives of 1,069 women in the state. A total of 1,671 persons were arrested for cases related to dowry torture and death, they said.
Another 66 women became victims of witch hunting and 408 persons were arrested in the 55 cases registered against such crimes.
Meanwhile, officials said that due to various preventive measures and awareness programmes undertaken by the government, the incidence of witch-hunting deaths have come down to 14 in 2012 from 29 the previous year.
Thousands of women have been abducted in the previous years. Of the 19,902 cases of women abduction registered, 14,488 were related to marriage. A total of 9,032 people were arrested on abduction charge and 113 of them were jailed for the crime.
The officials said many kidnappings happen for marriage and most of them end in reconciliation or compromise at a later stage, officials said. For instance, of the 3,764 kidnapping cases reported in 2011, 2,715 (70 per cent) were of this nature, they said.
Of the total 14,285 persons arrested during the eight years, 1,729 were convicted by courts, while trial of the rest was on, sources said. Thirty Women Cells were created and operationalised under the state Chief Minister’s Vision 2016 in all the district police stations with adequate number of sanctioned posts of women police personnel.
Capacity building of police personnel has been done through in house and specialised agencies, while senior officers were directed to closely supervise all such cases for effective results and visible action, the officials said. (PTI)