The media emphasizes rape in India too often. So many viral news stories about gang rapes that happened and so many people saying it's dangerous as a woman to travel in India because they'll get raped.

According to the National Family Health Survey in India, where they surveyed 83,703 women in India in a nationally representative sample, they found 8.5% of women in India report being victims of sexual violence at least once in their lifetime, but it's unknown how many of these incidents were actually sexual coercion or groping, and it's unknown if they used the phrase sexual violence or not. In 2022, in the United States, just 21.4% of rapes were reported to police (but the crime was much more reported in the United States back a few decades ago). A study in India found 71% of rapes go unreported. Another analysis found 99.1% of sexual violence in India was unreported because most of it was by the husband. Nonetheless, the vast majority of women there are not raped by their husband. Outside marriage, only 15% of rape victims not raped by a spouse report it. As a result, it's unknown how often it gets reported with two contradictory studies.

Either way, rape against women has declined in India, and in the mid-2010s, only 5.5% or so of women in India reported being victims of sexual violence in their lifetime, compared to 8.5% 10 years prior. Sexual violence rates in the past year also declined, and rapes are now more reported than they used to since 2012. A low percentage of women are victims of sexual violence in India in the past year, and it's lower these days. A BJS statistician from 1987 estimated based off NCVS data that just 8% of women, including 8% of white women and 11% of black women, will be raped in their lifetime in the United States, yet a reviewer found even this is an overestimate. The 1 in 5 myth was promoted by the CDC due to poor methodology. As a result, in 1987, it was probably lower than 8% of women in their lifetime, and rape rates in the United States peaked at the time (same with general crime rates). Yet, the percentage of women raped in India is no higher than this overestimate, and that percentage might not only be women who are victims of rape, but also sexual coercion, too. This means the rape rate in India is not particularly higher than it is in the United States. In fact, it's South Africa that was the rape capital of the world. 2nd place is Botswana.

In fact, this statistic shows that crimes against women in India have a 19% conviction rate compared to 47% for general crime, but it could be crimes that get convicted more easily happen more to men and crimes that get convicted less easily happen more to women. Maybe compared to female victims of the same crime, a crime is not more convicted with male victims. Additionally, although rapes have been more reported in India since 2012, the conviction rate is lower nowadays, at a quarter of cases these days, compared to 44.3% for rape in 1973 and 37.7% for rape in 1983. This is closer to the conviction rate for general crime today, although, it is unknown what the conviction rate for general crime was in the 1970s. However, this study shows 39% of rape cases are convicted and 41% of murder cases, and that riots have a low conviction rate of 29%. This well-written study found when looking at various crimes in India, they compared murder, culpable homicide, attempted murder, dowry deaths, rape, robbery and kidnapping. They wrote:

I find that investigation into reported cases of rape and dowry death are initiated at higher rates compared to investigation into gender-neutral violent crimes. While the investigation completion rates as well as trial completion rates are also higher for rapes and dowry deaths, conviction rates for these crimes are considerably lower than the other violent crimes considered in this study.

However, when actually looking at the data and not the abstract, compared to other crimes, rape and dowry deaths did not have significantly lower conviction rates, except compared to murder and culpable homicide, which had somewhat higher conviction rates than other crimes. Conviction rates for rape in India have declined since back in the day but this true for conviction rates for crime in general in India.

This paper looking at rape cases in Washington D.C. in the early-mid 1970s found discrimination against female victims is not why rape might have less convictions nor is it because of female victims being unwilling to continue, but questioning the credibility of an accuser when it comes to rape. They found young men (especially teens) who rape get convicted more easily and so do rapists whose victims' ages are older women or an unknown age. Also, rapists who are strangers or whose victim-offender relationship is unknown get convicted more easily. It could be that judges view young men as more sexually interested in women, or view older women are less interested in sex than young women or less physically attractive and thus assuming people won't want consensual sex with her. They might view rapists as strangers in the dark alley, which is not usually how rapists are. Feminists promote that myth when they perpetuate the myth that women are less safe walking alone at night. The research found that victim's credibility can be questioned because they can't figure out if it was consensual or not or just a false accusation. There are women who even think regretting sex with someone makes it rape. It could be because rape had worse penalties, judges might need to see undeniable evidence to give someone such a harsh punishment. Murder is just easy to convict and find the culprit of. Nowadays, however, rapists are not less likely to be convicted, arrested or have their crime cleared, or incarcerated compared to other kinds of reported criminals.

You can't get away with rape in India if people know about it even if you don't get put in prison.

In India, any woman can falsely accuse a man and ruin his life and get away with no consequences even when it is proven that she lied. Many women are abusing this law to settle personal scores, extort money, intimidate others and even for social media attention. For example, a woman threatened to file a rape case on a bank official who went to collect debt. He had to touch her feet and beg for forgiveness and write an apology letter which she later posted on her social media and bragged about. Btw, the video you see in the example below was recorded and uploaded by the woman's family themselves. That's how confident they were that she would face no consequences and they were right. She received no punishment despite the incident becoming viral on social media and getting a lot of attention.

Example:

Woman threatens to file rape case on bank employee who went to collect debt.

Police in India take rape very seriously, and they're very corrupt and don't care about their job. They shoot alleged rapists to death and don't even give them due process and everyone praises the police as a hero, and many false accusations in India DO happen because of the benefits women get from it there. Because it's legally rape to have sex with a woman with the false promise of marriage in India, many women falsely accuse their ex of rape in India. There is also massive outrage from society and public marches on the street demanding justice when rapes happen and non-stop coverage on the news channels. You will never ever see even a fraction of this when a man is raped or killed or falsely accused by a woman even if it drives him to suicide. Nobody here condones rape and even being accused of rape is enough to be beaten to death by a mob. Police may not have done anything about notorious Indian serial rapist and gang leader Akku Yadav, but that's because he kept bribing them. Eventually, he got lynched in a courtroom by many people and they didn't get arrested. Here's other examples of suspected rapists in India being lynched or viciously attacked.