1.4 million youth arrested for riots in 10 years, 96% men: NCRB

Of the 3.2 million arrested for their involvement in riots between 2006 and 2015, 46 per cent, or 1.4 million, were youths (between 18 years and 30 years), according to national crime data. Of these, 96 per cent were men. On July 4, 2017, clashes broke out between two communities in Baduria, North 24 Parganas district of West Bengal, following a 17-year-old’s Facebook post on Prophet Mohammed. As many as 66 people were arrested.

On August 25, riots erupted in Panchkula, 250 km north of New Delhi, shortly after a court convicted Dera Sacha Sauda chief Gurmeet Ram Rahim Singh of raping two devotees at his ashram in 2002. As many as 30 people were killed and 250 injured in the violence. Around 950 arrests were made. Around 142,000 youths were arrested for involvement in riots in 2015, up 0.5 per cent from 134,000 in 2006, according to National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) data. Around 11.1 per cent arrests took place in 2013. Women accounted for 3.7 per cent of youth arrests in 2015, down from 4.3 per cent in 2006.

NCRB started listing cases related to riots under eight categories from 2014. In 2015, 4.3 per cent of 142,020 arrests were for caste-related riots, followed by 3.8 per cent for politics-related one, 2.1 per cent for communal riots and 0.4 per cent for industrial riots. In 2014, the arrests were highest for politics-related riots (3.2 per cent), followed by caste-related ones (2.4 per cent), communal riots (2 per cent) and industrial riots (0.2 per cent).