Bengal Police contests India Justice Report after state gets lowly 18th rank
Times of India | 22 April 2025
123 Kolkata: The Bengal Police has contested the findings of the fourth India Justice Report (IJR) 2025, which ranked Bengal 18th among all states based on the performance of three key components of the criminal justice system: the judiciary, prisons, and legal aid. According to the report, Bengal's prison system came 11th, legal aid 15th, and police/judiciary 18th.
"At the bottom tier, states such as Bihar, Rajasthan, Jharkhand, Uttarakhand, Uttar Pradesh, and Bengal have largely maintained their positions with minor shifts," the IJR report stated. It also highlighted how the system continued to falter under systemic gaps, manpower shortages, and deep-rooted inequalities. It stated that the police force was critically understaffed, the judiciary was struggling to reflect diversity, and the prisons were overcrowded.
The Bengal Police has appealed to the researchers not to restrict their focus "merely to input and process indicators". In a report circulated internally on Saturday, the Bengal Police attempted to empirically compare the IJR report with the National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) 2022 report. It claimed that a dual focus on institutional capacity and real-world performance metrics, such as crime resolution, access to justice, and public confidence, would provide a "more balanced, comprehensive, and actionable picture of justice delivery across states".
"To assess the functional efficiency of these institutions, output and outcome indicators must be considered. In practice, better infrastructure or increased personnel does not automatically translate to fairness, functional efficiency, responsiveness or citizen-friendly behaviour by the police and legal system," said R Rajasekaran, ADG (training). "According to IJR, Bengal ranks 18th. But the NCRB Crime in India Report 2022 — the most recent crime data available — shows Bengal's crime rate stood at 194.9 per 100,000 population, significantly lower than several states ranked higher in the IJR, like Tamil Nadu (989.5), Maharashtra (278.4), and Karnataka (244.4)," he added.
"The same logic applies to Kolkata, a city that has consistently been deemed the safest in India for three consecutive years by NCRB. The IPC Crime Rate (per 1 lakh population) in Kolkata is 78.2, the lowest in India compared to Chennai (173.5), Delhi (183.3), Hyderabad (266.7), Bengaluru (337.3), and Mumbai (376.3)," said IG (Swami Vivekananda State Police Academy) Murlidhar Sharma.