Sajidah Yousuf
Srinagar, Sep 23: Among eight other Union Territories (UTs) of India, Jammu and Kashmir has recorded the highest number of environment-related offences in the year 2020, reveals National Crime Record Bureau (NCRB) official data.
According to the data revealed by NCRB, Jammu and Kashmir stands first in the list of environment-related offences with 62 case among eight UTs followed by Puducherry with 54 and Delhi with 23 cases.
As per the NCRB report, Jammu and Kashmir reported eight cases of environment-related offences in 2018. In 2019, the cases increased to 20 and subsequently in 2020, the number of environment-related offences increased to 62.
The official document reads as, “Out of 62 cases, Jammu and Kashmir reported 47 offence cases of the Forest Act and the Forest Conservation Act, 1927 and 15 offence cases of the Wildlife Protection Act, 1972.”
As per the NCRB report, as many as 46 people were arrested for environmental-related offences. Whereas, 45 people have been chargesheeted in the year 2020 and 51 people were acquitted in the year 2020.
Also, as per the report, as many as 80 cases were pending at the disposal of police which include 62 from the year 2020, while 18 cases were pending from the previous year. Out of 80 cases, 29 cases were disposed of by the police whereas at the end of the year 51 cases were pending at the disposal of the police.
The data states that in the year 2020, a total of 61,767 cases were registered across the country under Environment Related Offences as compared to 34,676 cases in the year 2019, showing an increase of 78.1 percent.
