Two reports from two national bodies monitoring crimes against women have come up with two opposite ratings for Kolkata.

The National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) report published in October 2025 has for the fourth straight year announced Kolkata as India's safest city. Barely five weeks before the NCRB findings, the National Commission for Women ranked Kolkata below average in women safety across the country, behind cities such as Mumbai, Visakhapatnam, Bhubaneswar.

The contradiction between hard numbers and lived reality is huge.

According to the latest NCRB report for 2023, Kolkata registered just 83.9 cognisable offences per lakh people, the lowest among 19 major Indian cities with a population of over 20 lakh.

The latest publicly available NCRB data released covers the year 2023 while the NARI report covers the year 2025.

State industries and women and child development minister Shashi Panja told media, "The NCRB data vindicates our claims that Kolkata is a safe city and debunks political claims from opponents. CM Mamata Banerjee has stressed repeatedly that there should be zero tolerance to crime."

TMC MP and National spokesperson also said, "For the 4th year in a row, Kolkata is India’s safest city.

This is data from the NCRB under the Union Home Ministry so it’s not us praising ourselves."

A month ago, the National Annual Report & Index on Women's Safety (NARI) told another story.

Based on a survey of 12,770 women across 31 cities, the report ranked Kolkata among the least safe cities for women, placing it in the same bracket as Delhi, Patna, Ranchi, Jaipur, Faridabad and Srinagar.

Cities such as Kohima, Visakhapatnam, Bhubaneswar, Aizawl, Gangtok, Itanagar and Mumbai were listed as safest for women, credited with stronger gender equity, better infrastructure and responsive policing.

The study also highlighted a nationwide gap between perception and data: while six in ten women said they felt safe, nearly 40 per cent still felt "not so safe" or "unsafe."

Safety perceptions plummeted at night, especially on public transport and in recreational spaces.

The report noted, "Two out of three women do not report harassment, meaning NCRB misses the bulk of incidents."

That gap between record and reality is not abstract.

Last month, The Telegraph Online reached out to women across Kolkata who shared accounts of routine harassment and fear in public spaces.

"I realised some man was pressing himself against my buttocks. At first, I thought he was adjusting. But no... I knew what he was trying to hint at," one person said.

When she protested, she recalls, "I yelled at him, told others what he did. But no one paid much attention. The crowded bus just had an eerie silence."

This account was of a bus ride to college.

Many mentioned groping in crowded transport has become routine.

In Bengal, the state police placed 3,88,557 cases of crimes against women before courts, but trials were completed in only 19,953 cases, about 5.1 per cent.

Convictions came in just 748 cases, a rate of 3.7 per cent, the lowest among all states and Union Territories.