NEW DELHI: The murder rate in India in 2017 was the lowest it has been in the last 54 years. In fact, with the exception of 1963, it has never been lower since 1957, the earliest year for which data on this rate is available.

The just released Crime in India 2017, a publication of the

(NCRB), put the murder rate (including

) for the year at 2.49 per lakh population. Barring 1963, when it had touched 2.34, it has always been higher, peaking at 5.15 in 1992 before dropping steadily to its current level.

Although overall crime rates have increased over the years, there has been a steady decline in the murder rate (incidents per lakh population) and they have in recent years been at the lowest levels since the 1950s. Even globally, murder rates have been on the decline in almost every country in recent decades.

Prior to the most recent period, the 14 years between 1957 and 1970 were the least violent in terms of murder and culpable homicides, with less than three incidents reported for every lakh of population.

From the 1970s, the rate started increasing to reach its peak in 1992, about 75% higher than in the 1950s. Murders also peaked in absolute numbers in that year.

UP and

top NCRB murder chart

Murders in India peaked in absolute numbers in 1992 and have been falling since then, dropping to below 3 per lakh starting with 2013. At the peak in 1992, UP witnessed 12,287 incidents of murder and culpable homicide not amounting to murder, the highest in the country. It was followed by Bihar (5,743),

(3,753),

(3,338) and

(2,841). Despite the populations of these states having increased several fold since then, murder and culpable homicides have declined even in absolute terms in all of them.

Traditional theories of criminal justice — crime being linked to economic instability and capital punishment acting as a deterrent to violent crime — have failed to explain this global trend of falling murder rates as they have declined despite turbulent economic conditions and capital punishment increasingly being discarded.