Big cities are incomplete without crime. A reality that our government and the people have accepted and are somehow living with it. The police and law enforcement do not believe the same as they are constantly working to catch the bad guys and bring them to justice. 

However, the pandemic saw a decline in many mainstream crimes not just in Hyderabad but also across the nation. ‘Crime in India 2020’ report brought out by the National Crime Records Bureau clears the picture with 90% accurate statistics of Hyderabad and other big cities. The reports showed a good dip in violent crimes from 1,431 incidents in 2019 to 1045 incidents in 2020. Crime against women though a big number but still showed some improvement as it dropped from 2,755 in 2019 to 2,390 in 2020. 

In addition, a sharp decline was observed in crime against children and crime by juveniles as these figures dipped by 60% in 2020. However, the cybercrime, forgery, cheating, and fraud cases, a segment by the National Crime Records Bureau, put Hyderabad on top in 2019 and 2020 among 19 other cities with 2,040 incidents and Delhi far behind with 1,400 incidents in Delhi. Hyderabad is third to Delhi and Mumbai in banking fraud which involves credit and debit card forgery and other scams. The ranking of these three cities remained unchanged in both years as the number of incidents increased.

 Hyderabad holds the number 1 spot for Adulteration of food, sale of illegal meds and drugs (intoxicants) with  272 cases, and Mumbai is way down with just 65 cases. Road accidents remained in constant top 10 in both the years, with 1,800 incidents and 1,400 cases of negligent driving. 

However, Hyderabad still stands second behind Delhi in violent crimes by Husband and family and SC/ST Prevention of Atrocities Act. The entire report has put mainstream crime rates in the backseat while fraud, drug abuse, family atrocities, and road cities are alarming. However, the 2021 report will come next year, and these reports are pretty unpredictable, especially with this year recording quite a lot of cyber frauds.