Crimes against Tourists

In News

Crimes against tourists and other foreign nationals appear to be on the rise in India.

Key Findings

• Reported and unreported crimes:
  • There have been various reported (and unreported) incidents of foreigners falling victim to crimes in our country. 
  • For every crime committed against foreigners, there would be several others that go unreported for multifarious reasons, with one of them being the fear instilled in them by the threats of these criminals.
• Main victim: 
  • Women are more prone to sexual attacks by criminals on the prowl in tourist destinations. 
• States: 
  • Delhi recorded 27 cases of crime against foreigners last year, a drastic decline from 62 cases reported in 2020 and 123 in 2019. 
  • Rajasthan has shown a sharp reduction in registration of crimes from 16 in 2019 to just 4 in 2020 and two cases last year, which could be attributed to the sharp decline in tourist arrivals due to COVID-19.  

Image Courtesy: 2021 Data 

• Crimes: 
  • Murder: As many as 29 foreigners were murdered in the last three years. 
  • Raoe: While 14 foreigners fell victim to rape last year, 16 were raped in 2020 and 12 in 2019. 
  • Assault: As many as 15 cases of assault to outraging modesty of foreign women were registered last year across the country, apart from 14 complaints of cheating. 
  • Theft: While 142 cases of theft were lodged by foreigners in 2019, it declined to 52 in 2020 and further dipped to 23 in 2021.

Tourism in India

• Tourism happens to be one of the biggest foreign exchange earners for India and constant effort needs to be made to raise earnings. 
• While India’s earnings through tourism was $30.06 billion in 2019, it declined to $6.958 billion in 2020 due to COVID-19 and the resultant restrictions in foreign tourists entering the country. 
• A marginal increase of $8.797 billion was recorded last year.

Impact

• Global image: Crime against foreigners dents our image globally.
• Tourist inflow: It could also adversely affect the inflow of foreign tourists, which is a vital source of income for our country. 

Tourist Police Scheme

• Origin: Though the concept of ‘tourist police’ has been in vogue for the past few years, it has not been given the kind of attention it deserves. 
• States having: The States that have tourist police are Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Delhi, Goa, Rajasthan and Kerala. 
• Scheme by:  The Bureau of Police Research and Development (BPRD) has brought out a booklet on the tourist police scheme detailing the mode of setting up of tourist police stations and control rooms, outposts, uniforms, recruitment, qualifications, training and logistics requirements for tourist police stations. 
• Tourist spots identified: As many as 25 popular tourist spots have been identified in the country where the tourist police necessarily need to be deployed to help foreigners. 
• Incentive: As an incentive, a 30% deputation allowance has been recommended for the police personnel who join the tourist police on deputation.

Way Ahead

• With optimistic predictions of about 13.34 million foreign tourists arriving by 2024, there is a pressing need to upgrade our security systems specially to provide a flawless security blanket cover to foreign tourists. 
• Sensitise the specific requirements of the tourists for effective implementation of Uniform Tourist Police Scheme at pan-India level.
• Much needs to be done to instil a sense of security in tourists even before they leave their countries for India. 
• With theft being the most common crime committed against foreigners, all criminals in and around tourist spots need to be identified and kept under constant surveillance.
• Since foreigners come for short durations, the cases cannot be allowed to linger on in courts for long. Fast track courts should be set up immediately to try cases of crime against foreigners and the culprits punished speedily.

Source: TH