Crime in India has been recorded since the British Raj, with comprehensive statistics now compiled annually by the National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB), under the Ministry of Home Affairs (India).
Kaizaad Kotwal is an Indian producer, director, actor, writer and designer. He has worked on over 200 theatre and film productions, including the Indian production of the Vagina Monologues. He won an Emmy Award for Art Direction in 1996.
Ujjwal Nikam is an Indian special public prosecutor who has worked on prominent murder and terrorism cases. He helped prosecute suspects in the 1993 Bombay bombings, the Gulshan Kumar murder case, the Pramod Mahajan murder case, and the 2008 Mumbai attacks. He was also the special public prosecutor in the 2013 Mumbai gang rape case, 2016 Kopardi rape and murder case. Ujjwal Nikam argued on behalf of the state during the 26/11 Mumbai attack trial.
Ramendra Kumar is an Indian author of children's books. He has written 35 books in English, translated into 15 Indian languages and 14 others. Kumar also writes satire, poetry, travelogues, adult fiction, and non-fiction.
Poonam Ahluwalia was a social entrepreneur, Founder, and Director of Youth Entrepreneurship and Sustainability (YES), an international Nonprofit Organization and Youth Trade, an organization promoting youth entrepreneurship, based at Babson College in Wellesley, MA.
Rape is the fourth most common crime against women in India. According to the 2021 annual report of the National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB), 31,677 rape cases were registered across the country, or an average of 86 cases daily, a rise from 2020 with 28,046 cases, while in 2019, 32,033 cases were registered. Of the total 31,677 rape cases, 28,147 of the rapes were committed by persons known to the victim. The share of victims who were minors or below 18 – the legal age of consent – stood at 10%.
The 2012 Delhi gang rape and murder, commonly known as the Nirbhaya case, involved a rape and fatal assault that occurred on 16 December 2012 in Munirka, a neighbourhood in South Delhi. The incident took place when Jyoti Singh, a 22-year-old physiotherapy intern, was beaten, gang-raped, and tortured in a private bus in which she was travelling with her male friend, Avnindra Pratap Pandey. There were six others in the bus, including the driver, all of whom raped the woman and beat her friend. She was rushed to Safdarjung Hospital in Delhi for treatment and, as the public outrage mounted, the government had her transferred to Mount Elizabeth Hospital, Singapore eleven days after the assault, where she succumbed to her injuries two days later. The incident generated widespread national and international coverage and was widely condemned, both in India and abroad. Subsequently, public protests against the state and central governments for failing to provide adequate security for women took place in New Delhi, where thousands of protesters clashed with security forces. Similar protests took place in major cities throughout the country. Since Indian law does not allow the press to publish a rape victim's name, the victim was widely known as Nirbhaya, meaning "fearless", and her struggle and death became a symbol of women's resistance to rape around the world.
Rajesh Gangwar is a socialist who believes in nonviolence. Born and raised in a small village of Bareilly, Uttar Pradesh he became an engineer, but left his career after becoming interested in social movements. He has been on several hunger strikes to protest against the harassment of women.
The 2013 Mumbai gang rape, also known as the Shakti Mills gang rape, refers to the incident in which a 22-year-old photojournalist, who was interning with an English-language magazine in Mumbai, was gang-raped by five people including a juvenile. The incident occurred on 22 August 2013, when she had gone to the deserted Shakti Mills compound, near Mahalaxmi in South Mumbai, with a male colleague on an assignment. The accused had tied up the victim's colleague with belts and raped her. The accused took photos of the victim during the sexual assault, and threatened to release them to social networks if she reported the rape. Later, an eighteen-year-old call centre employee reported that she too had been gang-raped, on 31 July 2013 inside the mills complex.
The Entrepreneurship Cell, IIT Bombay, also known as E-Cell, IIT Bombay, is the primary entrepreneurship promoting body of the Indian Institute of Technology Bombay, managed and run completely by the students of the institute. It organizes initiatives like the annual business plan competition Eureka! and the flagship event, The Entrepreneurship Summit (E-Summit) in January each year, which receives a footfall of over 30,000 people who include students, investors, corporates, mentors, celebrities and the most important; Entrepreneurs.
Dekh Le is a viral video dealing with the subject of men ogling women in India. It was produced by film studies students at Mumbai-based Whistling Woods International Institute of Film, Fashion & Media and released on 16 December 2013, the first anniversary of the 2012 Delhi gang rape. It garnered one million hits in its first week on YouTube.
Neha Dixit is an Indian freelance journalist covering politics, gender and social justice. She has been awarded over a dozen awards including the Chameli Devi Jain Award (2016) as well as CPJ International Press Freedom Award (2019).
Amisha Sethi is an Indian author, philanthropist, business leader, actress and a model. She was crowned the winner of Haut Monde Mrs. India Worldwide 2021. Her novel, It Doesn't Hurt To Be Nice, was published by Shristi Publishers in 2015. She acted in the 2022 short film Dronacharya released on Disney+Hotstar and MX Player.
The Vagina Monologues is performed annually to bring attention to V-Day in thousands of cities and colleges worldwide. The performances generally benefit rape crisis centers and similar resource centers for women.
Ashutosh Vijay Kotwal is an American particle physicist of Indian origin. He is the Fritz London Professor of Physics at Duke University, and conducts research in particle physics related to W bosons and the Higgs boson and searches for new particles and forces.
Abha Singh is an Indian activist and advocate currently practicing in the High Court of Judicature at Bombay. Her activism has focused on women's rights, gender equality, and justice.
The Sadou Asom Lekhika Samaroh Samiti is a non-government women’s literary organisation in Assam, India. It was founded in 1974 to unite and emancipate the women of Assam through creative pursuits, especially literature. It has more than two hundred branches all over Assam and in Kolkata, Shillong and Dimapur. The head office of the organisation is in Tezpur. The branches of the samiti also have offices in their respective places.
Son Rise is a 2019 Indian Hindi-language documentary film directed and produced by Vibha Bakshi. The film is set in Haryana, infamous for its strongly embedded patriarchy. Yet, from this unlikeliest place, Vibha Bakshi's Son Rise follows those men who are trying to break the shackles of patriarchy and fight for women's rights.
Sakuntala Narasimhan is an Indian journalist, consumer rights activist, and classical vocalist from the Rampur-Sahaswan gharana of Hindustani classical music. She was a disciple of Hafeez Ahmed Khan and is the only vocalist in India to have performed in the National Programme of Music organized by Doordarshan and All India Radio in both Carnatic and Hindustani styles. She was trained in Carnatic classical music by vocalists Musiri Subramania Iyer and Thanjavur Brinda. She is also the only artiste doing a “self-jugalbandi” juxtaposing the two styles.
