Over 90 individuals, disability rights activists and organisations have written to Home Minister Amit Shah, urging him to ensure that the National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) maintains disaggregated data on violence against disabled girls and women.
The disability rights groups and activists, including the National Platform for the Rights of the Disabled, National Association for the Blind and the All India Federation of the Deaf, said despite a large number of reported cases of sexual assaults on disabled girls and women, the NCRB does not maintain disaggregated data on such violence. "We would like to urge upon you to pass necessary orders to ensure that the NCRB maintains disaggregated data which includes, but is not restricted to, sex, age, place of residence, relationship with perpetrator and disability in cases of violence and exploitation, including gender-based violence against women and girls with disabilities, and violence inflicted by intimate partners," they said in the letter to Shah.
They further said that the NCRB, in response to an RTI query in December 2020, has sought to take refuge behind the specious plea that police is a State Subject under the 7th Schedule of the Indian Constitution. "By that reasoning, NCRB should not be collating data for most of the crimes, as law and order is a state subject," they said.
They said this issue becomes all the more urgent as the country is witnessing a growing number of cases of sexual assaults on girls and women with disabilities. "We observe that during the pandemic period also there has been no respite. On the contrary, we find that there has been an increase in their numbers and the ferocity and brutality inflicted on the victims/survivors has escalated," they said.