Delhi was tagged as the “Crime capital” of India in a public speech by our present Prime Minister, owing to the large number of crimes that occur in the capital.

Delhi daze: the mystery behind unidentified deaths and missing teens — Image Source – Newslaundry

The capital city tops all the crime charts of the country with a 41% share of the total crimes committed, as per the recently released Crime in India Data by NCRB.

The live evidence of such crimes can be ascertained by several Police notices issued in the newspapers, which are about either missing individuals or the identification of unknown dead bodies.

Crime hot spots of Delhi

Most of the reported incidents of missing individuals and unidentified dead bodies are reported in Northern Delhi, specifically the areas bordering the neighboring states of Haryana and Uttar Pradesh.

The map depicts the spatial view of Delhi (outlined in black, to the best accuracy) the regions around and within the blue paths (except the New Delhi area) are the hot spots of such unlawful incidents.

A crude observation of the areas within the blue paths (except the New Delhi area) reveals a high density of urban slums (red dots) in the region.

Delhi’s vulnerabilities

As stated by the Former Delhi Police Commissioner Neeraj Kumar the major reasons for high crime in Delhi is due to:-

More number of online complaints are registered than in any other city.
Delhi resided the most number of brutish-minded people, specifically the population in Delhi’s hinterland area (around 60-70% of them) are (labor) migrants from Punjab, Haryana, and Uttar Pradesh.

“here most people talk crudely, and even their attitude is not mild-mannered at all and most of the criminals that I have encountered during our time mostly have this same mentality of ‘jo kiyaachakiya’ and show no remorse at all”.

Shortage of police personnel, according to the data from MHA, Delhi has 83,762 police personnel, but 25% of that (i.e. 20,940), are regularly deployed on VIP duties. Hence 62,821 policemen head over the entire city. Ratio vise, 1 policeman is accountable for 300 people.

As per 2011 census, Delhi annually receives nearly two lakh migrants from all over India. And most of them are labor class with little awareness of the law which fuels the concern.

Types of victims

Unidentified dead bodies

Most of the unidentified dead bodies are majorly middle-aged men and they are found in hot spots (as marked on the map earlier), especially on the railway tracks which have bleak outreach, or in abandoned buildings/market areas.

There could be several root causes but the most common ones as derived from the police and local source are:-

- Death due to excessive alcohol consumption or sickness due to any diseases, since most of the people in the locality are laborers they may be unable to access basic health care.
- When these individuals wander around railway station/metro station they may pass out on the tracks, and thus gets mauled by the overrun locomotive.
- The other case could be due to gang rivalry, which leads to clashes and the killed victim could either be left on the tracks or set ablaze.

Missing individuals

When it comes to missing individuals there is no exception for gender and age, but the reasons can stretch from “absconding/fled away from home by self-will” to “kidnapping/human trafficking”.

While most of the women going missing, may get victimized from sexual assault, men could be unlawfully apprehended by robbery gangs, sometimes even for demanding ransom.

Theft among all crimes has spiked in Delhi with an upward trend — from 43% in 2009 to 80% in 2018

According to former DCP, Theft mainly happens due to poor education and lack of jobs. As per the NSO report, Delhi recorded a rise in unemployment from 3.1% in 2015-16 to 9.4% in 2017-18.