37% of Delhi’s MLAs in 2020 Have Been Accused of Committing Crimes Against Women or Causing Serious Injury or Death

A dive into the report titled “ Analysis of Criminal Background, Financial, Education, Gender and other details of MLAs (Delhi Assembly Election 2020)” by Association for Democratic Reforms reveals that 27% of MLAs with declared criminal cases are accused of committing serious crimes against women, while 44% are accused of committing crimes accounting to causing or intent to causing serious injury or death. 83% of the total MLAs who’ve declared criminal cases related to committing crimes against women were from Aam Aadmi Party (AAP), while 21% of the MLAs with declared criminal cases related to committing crimes accounting to causing or intent to causing serious injury or death were from Bharatiya Janta Party (BJP).

For the purpose of this analysis, I’ve further narrowed down the list of crimes that Association for Democratic Reforms considers as serious offence:

1. Serious Crimes Against Women: Charges associated with assault/criminal force on a woman with an intent to outrage her modesty /rape/sexual assault/words, gestures or acts intended to insult the modesty of a woman/ causing miscarriage without woman’s consent.
2. Crimes accounting to causing or intent to causing serious injury or death: Charges associated with culpable homicide/robbery or dacoity with an intent to cause death or grievous hurt/voluntary causing grievous hurt/ attempt to murder/putting person in fear of death or of grievous hurt, in order to commit extortion/voluntarily causing hurt by dangerous weapons or means.

I’ve removed some categories that the Association considers serious crimes from this analysis, such as: charges related to criminal intimidation, voluntarily causing hurt to deter public servant from his duty, theft etc. The categories that were chosen for this article were based on crimes that resulted in direct bodily harm (for non-public servants) or to having an intent to do so. I’ve removed pending cases related harm caused to public servants due to the sometimes frivolous nature of the cases.

I’d also like to point out that the 43 elected Delhi MLAs have declared criminal cases. This does not imply that the rest 27 MLAs do not have a serious legal cases pending against them. Furthermore, out of the 43 MLAs with declared criminal cases, only 5 belong to the BJP (the total number of elected BJP MLAs in Delhi is 8).

Additional Analysis

Out of all the crimes analysed in this article, three crimes stood out, namely charges related to rape, attempt to commit culpable homicide and attempt to murder. All the three kind of criminal charges are being faced by AAP MLAs. Mohinder Goyal from Rithala constituency is accused of rape, Arvind Kejriwal of New Delhi constituency and Amanatullah Khan of Okhla/Shaheen Bagh constituency are accused of committing culpable homicide, while Abdul Rehman of Seelampur is accused of attempt to murder.

The list of all MLAs (with declared criminal cases)accused of serious crimes against women:

The list of all MLAs (with declared criminal cases)accused of committing crimes accounting to causing or intent to causing serious injury or death:

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