According to the National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB), Kolkata has emerged as India’s safest city for the fourth consecutive year. The data was recorded across 19 metropolitan cities such as Ahmedabad, Bengaluru, Chennai, Coimbatore, Delhi, Ghaziabad, Hyderabad, and Surat.

According to the National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB), Kolkata has emerged as India’s safest city for the fourth consecutive year, and the lowest rate of cognizable crimes was recorded in 2023.
According to the NCRB report, in 2023, 83.9 cognizable crimes per lakh population were recorded in Kolkata, which is the lowest among the 19 Indian cities with populations over two million surveyed by the Bureau.
The total number of cognizable cases is estimated to have decreased from 14,591 in 2021 to 12,213 in 2022, and further down to 11,843 in 2023.

Most crime-prone city

Remarkably, Kochi emerged as the most crime-prone city with 3,192.4 crimes per lakh population, followed by Delhi (2,105.3) and Surat (1,377.1).

Facts related to crimes against women

Kolkata also witnessed a similar decline in crimes against women. In 2023, 1,746 such cases were recorded, compared to 1,890 in 2022.
The rate of crimes against women stood at 25.7 per lakh population, which is the lowest in the country after Chennai (17.3) and Coimbatore (22.7).

Facts related to serious crimes

In terms of the most serious crimes, 10 adult rape cases were recorded in 2023 (compared to 11 in the previous two years). However, 172 cases of rape involving minors and 33 incidents of sexual assault against minors were recorded, placing Kolkata 10th among the 19 cities in this category.
Although overall violent crimes have decreased, the number of murders in Kolkata rose from 34 in 2022 to 43 in 2023. Nevertheless, these figures are lower than in previous years, such as 2021 and 2020.

Other facts

This data was recorded across 19 metropolitan cities such as Ahmedabad, Bengaluru, Chennai, Coimbatore, Delhi, Ghaziabad, Hyderabad, Indore, Jaipur, Kanpur, Kochi, Kolkata, Kozhikode, Lucknow, Mumbai, Nagpur, Patna, Pune, and Surat.
NCRB stated that in 2023, the average rate of cognizable crimes in these 19 cities was 828 per lakh.
Bengal, with a cognizable crime rate of 181.6, surpassed many major states, while the national average stood at 433. Bengal recorded 1,686 murders and 224 cases of culpable homicide not amounting to murder.
States performing better than Bengal include Jharkhand (161.1), Nagaland (84.9), Sikkim (103.9), and Meghalaya (105.2).

List of India’s top 10 safest cities

Kolkata, Hyderabad, Pune, Mumbai, Coimbatore, Chennai, Kanpur, Ghaziabad, Bengaluru, Ahmedabad.

List of India’s top 10 unsafe cities

Kochi, Delhi, Surat, Jaipur, Patna, Indore, Lucknow, Nagpur, Kozhikode, Ahmedabad (Ahmedabad falls between the safe/unsafe category).