Tracker · Atrocity & Accountability
Atrocity Justice tracker
India's 1989 law against caste violence is the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes (Prevention of Atrocities) Act. This page follows what happens to crimes against Dalits once they are registered: how many the police send to court, and how many the courts finish. It also tracks deaths in sewers and septic tanks. That work is done overwhelmingly by people from historically oppressed castes: 92% of urban sewer and septic-tank cleaners are from Scheduled Caste, Scheduled Tribe or Other Backward Class communities, a 2023–24 government survey found, as reported by India Development Review. The government's count of these deaths and sanitation workers' own count differ.
Cases, police and courts
Figures are for all crimes against Scheduled Castes (Dalits) that the National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) counts. NCRB's "conviction rate" is convictions as a share of trials completed that year, not of all cases before the courts.
Source: NCRB, Crime in India 2022 and 2024, Vol. 2, Tables 7A.1, 7A.4 and 7A.6. Compiled by The Dalit Project.
By state, 2024
| State or union territory | Cases registered | Per 100,000 Dalits | Charge-sheeted | Pending trial | Conviction rate |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Uttar Pradesh | 14,642 | 35.4 | 85.8% | 95.6% | 73.3% |
| Madhya Pradesh | 7,765 | 68.5 | 99.7% | 92.1% | 35.6% |
| Bihar | 7,549 | 45.6 | 87.9% | 99.0% | 36.1% |
| Rajasthan | 7,008 | 57.3 | 43.9% | 95.0% | 36.9% |
| Maharashtra | 3,219 | 24.2 | 94.0% | 95.7% | 9.3% |
| Odisha | 2,704 | 37.6 | 100.0% | 99.6% | 10.8% |
| Telangana | 2,059 | 37.9 | 76.4% | 87.6% | 3.7% |
| Karnataka | 2,016 | 19.2 | 83.6% | 93.7% | 3.2% |
| Andhra Pradesh | 1,823 | 21.6 | 81.5% | 88.9% | 2.4% |
| Tamil Nadu | 1,777 | 12.3 | 84.3% | 91.8% | 11.9% |
| Gujarat | 1,304 | 32.0 | 97.2% | 94.3% | 5.4% |
| Haryana | 1,076 | 21.0 | 55.5% | 92.5% | 18.2% |
| Kerala | 1,064 | 35.0 | 83.3% | 83.1% | 10.8% |
| Jharkhand | 566 | 14.2 | 60.3% | 93.2% | 42.2% |
| Chhattisgarh | 268 | 8.2 | 99.0% | 93.1% | 30.2% |
| Himachal Pradesh | 247 | 14.3 | 69.0% | 82.4% | 4.8% |
| Punjab | 166 | 1.9 | 64.2% | 92.6% | 5.7% |
| Uttarakhand | 153 | 8.1 | 79.2% | 96.2% | 38.5% |
| Delhi | 133 | 4.7 | 95.5% | 97.8% | 23.1% |
| West Bengal | 116 | 0.5 | 86.8% | 94.7% | 1.8% |
| Jammu & Kashmir | 19 | 2.1 | 26.7% | 92.3% | 0.0% |
| Assam | 7 | 0.3 | 25.0% | 93.3% | 0.0% |
| Chandigarh | 5 | 2.5 | 100.0% | 100.0% | 0.0% |
| Puducherry | 4 | 2.0 | 50.0% | 100.0% | 0.0% |
| Mizoram | 2 | 164.2 | 100.0% | 100.0% | 0.0% |
| D&N Haveli and Daman & Diu | 2 | 16.2 | 100.0% | 100.0% | 0.0% |
| Arunachal Pradesh | 1 | 0.0 | 100.0% | 100.0% | 0.0% |
| Goa | 1 | 3.9 | 100.0% | 90.9% | 0.0% |
| Manipur | 1 | 1.0 | 0.0% | 100.0% | 0.0% |
| Sikkim | 1 | 3.5 | 0.0% | 80.0% | 100.0% |
Rates per 100,000 use the 2011 Census count of Scheduled Castes, the population base NCRB uses. "Charge-sheeted" is the share of cases the police disposed of that went to court; "pending trial" is the share of cases before the courts still undecided at year end. Source: NCRB, Crime in India 2024, Vol. 2, Tables 7A.1, 7A.4 and 7A.6.
Deaths in sewers and septic tanks
The federal government counts these deaths through the National Commission for Safai Karamcharis and reports them to Parliament, most recently in a written reply to the Lok Sabha on 4 August 2026. The Safai Karamchari Andolan, a movement of sanitation workers, keeps its own count. Where both exist, its count is higher every year.
2026: the official count covers 1 January to 30 June; the Andolan's covers the first 188 days of the year. Official figures for earlier years have been revised upwards in later replies to Parliament; the figures shown are the latest. Sources for every number are in the download.
Officially recorded deaths by state, January 2021 to June 2026
| State or union territory | Deaths |
|---|---|
| Maharashtra | 58 |
| Haryana | 47 |
| Tamil Nadu | 38 |
| Uttar Pradesh | 37 |
| Delhi | 29 |
| Gujarat | 27 |
| Rajasthan | 23 |
| Madhya Pradesh | 13 |
| West Bengal | 13 |
| Karnataka | 12 |
| Punjab | 12 |
| Telangana | 9 |
| Andhra Pradesh | 5 |
| Dadra and Nagar Haveli | 3 |
| Bihar | 2 |
| Odisha | 2 |
| Goa | 1 |
| Jharkhand | 1 |
Download the data
- Crimes against Scheduled Castes, by state, 2022–2024 (NCRB) CSV
- Crimes against Scheduled Castes, by state 2016–2021 and nationally from 2014 (NCRB) CSV
- Sewer and septic-tank deaths by year: official and Safai Karamchari Andolan counts CSV
- Sewer and septic-tank deaths by state (official, 2021–June 2026) CSV
Every row names its source: the NCRB table, column and page, or the parliamentary reply and the report that carried it. Free to reuse with credit to The Dalit Project and the original source.
What this data can't tell you
- NCRB counts registered cases. Crimes that never reach a police station, or that police refuse to register, are not in these figures.
- NCRB records each case under its most serious offence, so a case with several charges appears once.
- The official sewer-death count depends on how each death is recorded. The government does not count these deaths as "manual scavenging", and figures for past years change between replies.
Reporting from this tracker
- Khairlanji at twenty: how three courts read caste out of a massacre
- Seven years after he married across caste, a Dalit man was killed in a Rajkot street. India still has no national law against "honour" killings
- Dangawas: a mob killed five Dalit men. The state has convicted no one
- Two police forces account for most of India's "false" caste-atrocity closures
- Sanitation workers counted 101 sewer deaths in the first 188 days of 2026. The government counted 16 for the half-year, none as manual scavenging
- India's courts finished trials in fewer than 5 of every 100 caste-atrocity cases before them in 2024
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