GUWAHATI: Nearly 13,000 women have been raped in the last eight years in Assam , official sources said.

State home department officials said 12,857 women were raped between 2005 and May 2013 and 59 of them were killed after rape.

Of the 8,181 cases filed against rape, 76 per cent of them were acted upon with 12,216 people arrested for committing the crime, the officials said.

The reasons for increase in crimes against women were attributed to rising population, social and family tension, gender discrimination, poverty, lack of job opportunity and insufficient manpower in the law enforcement agencies.

Atrocity against women were not only limited to rape, it also included torture for dowry which claimed the lives of 1,069 women in the state.

A total of 1,671 persons were arrested for cases related to dowry torture and death, they said.

Another 66 women became victims of witch hunting and 408 persons were arrested in the 55 cases registered against such crimes.

Meanwhile, officials said that due to various preventive measures and awareness programmes undertaken by the government, the incidence of witch-hunting deaths have come down to 14 in 2012 from 29 the previous year.

Thousands of women have been abducted in the previous years. Of the 19,902 cases of women abduction registered, 14,488 were related to marriage.

A total of 9,032 people were arrested on abduction charge and 113 of them were jailed for the crime, the officials said.