GUWAHATI, March 20 � In what is all set to throw fresh challenges before the law enforcing agencies in Assam, there has been a growing involvement of women in criminal acts, including grave ones, a development testified by the fact that nearly 5,000 women criminals have been arrested in the last three years.
These include nearly 140 accused arrested on charges of murder, a good number of them being cold-blooded ones.
Statistics show that most murders are committed by women between 18 and 45 years of age and the victims in most cases are known to the accused.
Involvement of women in serious offences like kidnapping or planned abduction has led to the arrest of nearly 80 of them in the last three years.
Even in commission of offences like rioting and thefts, the fairer sex has made rapid strides in Assam. Since 2011, over 1500 women were booked for thefts and nearly 500 of them for rioting.
While some attribute the trend as the fallout of growing intolerance in people as a whole, others opine that �as crime against women has increased, retaliation in some point of time was expected.�
�Assam may not be a place with the highest occurrence of crime by women, but the trend here is certainly alarming. Worse is the fact that women no longer commit serious offences like murder and abduction on the heat of the moment or owing to social or emotional reasons. Planned offences, including murder, and abduction through honey-trapping, have also become a forte of female criminals,� a senior Assam Police official said.
He opined that �crimes of passion� too have increased over the years in the State although there are no specific statistics with the law enforcing agencies in this regard.
�We all talk about crime against women, which no doubt is a serious issue. But, one must not overlook the growing rise in commission of crimes by women,� he observed.
Till mid-2013, nearly 300 women were languishing in different prisons of Assam in connection with various offences.
