Crime Against Senior Citizens in India: A Glaring Reality

Abstract

With the advent of human civilization a plethora of concepts developed simultaneously such as society, family and property. Another concept that was developing at the same time was crime. Crime has been defined differently by different scholars; one general meaning of crime is an act which is violation of public law and for which punishment is given by the state. Crime can be of different categories as the penal provisions provide for crimes against human body, property, state, public order and so on. The National Crime Record Bureau (NCRB) in India which measures crime rate in India has introduced a new category under the heading crimes against senior citizens since 2014. This new entry makes it evident that senior citizens and parents are also subject to various crimes in our society. Senior citizens and parents are supposed to be maintained and taken care of. Instead, in the present times, many glaring examples of elderly abuse are in the limelight. The fact that NCRB has given entry to crimes against senior citizens only since 2014 does not signify that there was no crime against the elderly people before 2014. Rather, it indicates that there has been a steep rise in the number of reported cases against senior citizens recently. In this paper an attempt will be made to analyze the scenario of crimes against senior citizens by analyzing the statistics of National Crime Record Bureau of five years and by reviewing few leading newspaper articles covering the news of abuse or crime against senior citizens.