1.4 Million Youth Arrested For Riots In 10 Years, 96% Men
Of 3.2 million persons arrested for involvement in riots between 2006 and 2015, 46%--or 1.4 million--were youth (18-30 years age-group), according to national crime data. Of these, 96% were men.
On July 4, 2017, clashes broke out between two communities in Baduria, North 24 Parganas district, West Bengal after a Facebook post about Prophet Mohammed by a 17-year-old, NDTV reported on July 6, 2017. As many as 66 people were arrested for involvement in the riot, Firstpost reported on July 12, 2017.
On August 25, 2017, riots erupted in Panchkula, 250km north of New Delhi, shortly after Gurmeet Singh, the chief of Dera Sacha Sauda, a religious cult group, was declared guilty of raping two devotees in his ashram in 2002. As many as 30 people were killed and 250 injured in the violence, The Hindu Business Line reported on August 25, 2017. Arrests went up to 950, Hindustan Times reported on August 30, 2017.
As many as 142,020 youth were arrested for involvement in riots in 2015, up 0.5% from 134,150 in 2006, according to data from the National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB). Most of the youth arrests (11.1%) happened in 2013.
Women accounted for 3.7% of youth arrests in 2015, down from 4.3% in 2006.
NCRB started listing cases related to riots under eight categories from 2014. In 2015, 4.3% of 142,020 arrests were for caste-related riots, followed by 3.8% for politics-related riots, 2.1% for communal riots and 0.4% for industrial-related riots.In 2014, the arrests were highest for politics-related riots (3.2%), followed by caste-related riots (2.4%), communal riots (2%) and industrial-related riots (0.2%).
(Vashisth is a data journalist with IndiaSpend.)