This may seem very hard to believe, but now is probably the safest time to be alive. Murder rates in India are at their lowest since we started tracking such data, according to the latest report of the National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB). And it’s the same story for most countries globally. NCRB started releasing data for murder and culpable homicide in 1957. In that year, India’s murder rate per lakh was 2.57. By 2023, the latest year for which NCRB has released its data, this had dropped to 2.25.
The murder rate rose steadily since 1957, and peaked in the 1990s, after which it has kept dropping. It fell below 4 in 2001, and dropped to under 3 in 2013.Among large states that registered more than 1,000 cases of murder and culpable homicide, the rate is the highest in Jharkhand – at 3.8 per lakh population. Jharkhand is followed by Haryana, Chattisgarh, Assam, Odisha and Telangana – each reporting a rate of 3 or higher. Globally, Japan is the safest country and South Africa the most dangerous, according to World Bank data. Japan, in 2020 – the last year for which comparable data across countries is available – saw only 0.3 murders per lakh population.