Mumbai: The city has seen a rise in crimes against women (up 13%) and children (up 7%) in 2025 from 2024, while cyber crime has dipped 5%, Mumbai Crime Reports for 2025, released on Monday, show.The report has highlighted a significant increase of 55% in snatching incidents compared to 2024, underlining a rise in street crime. Police have introduced a new classification system, specifically categorising mobile snatching and bag lifting incidents, considering the high value of stolen gadgets that fall under the ‘snatching’ category.
At 4,825, official data showed a 5% fall in cyber crime cases compared to 5,087 in 2024, prompting concerns of burking or under-reporting. Cyber experts, however, said the official number may reflect only 20% of the cyber complaints that police receive in a year.Police say reasons for the rise involve a complex interplay of socio-economic factors, urbanisation, and improved reporting. Motives for street and violent crimes often involve monetary gain, personal feuds, or the influence of drugs and alcohol.Overall, rise in reported street crime is a multi-faceted issue rooted in urban development challenges and improved transparency in the justice system, police said. This categorisation of street crime now also includes cases under the Indian Penal Code or Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita for illegal parking, obstruction to traffic, rash driving, and ‘negligent conduct in public’ (by hawkers using coal/gas cylinders on roads).Joint police commissioner (law and order) Satyanarayan Choudhary said the registration of cases in several categories including murder, rape, extortion, snatching has increased, but he said detection has also kept pace. All cases in the ‘serious’ categories have 100% detection rates, he added. By Dec-end, deputy police commissioners of different zones in the city had each organised 4-5 gatherings in community halls to return stolen property to complainants. The material recovered and returned at each function included gold ornaments, mobiles, other gadgets worth crores.Choudhary said other categories like property-related crimes have shown a drop, which includes robbery (by 32%), house break-ins (by up to 40%), and motor vehicle thefts by 11%, and recovery in these categories has also improved. “Recovery percentage in all property heads together increased 5%,” he added.RTI activist Jeetendra Ghadge said more police presence on the ground and a robust CCTV camera network are among reasons for the improved scenario, adding these contributed to a reduction to violent crimes as well.Former director general of police Praveen Dixit said street crime can be curbed further by involving communities in providing intel. He said areas where shops selling jewellery, watches, electronics and banks are located need CCTVs, alarms and armed guards.Dixit said police must undertake more nakabandis to track vehicles which are stolen or misused. He also said regular physical verification of persons with records of snatching and robbing needs to be ensured using techniques such as AI.The city also showed a 5% dip in cyber crime cases in 2025 — from 5,087 in 2024 to 4,825 the next year. Cyber experts said the official number may reflect only 20% of the total cyber complaints that Mumbai police receives in a year. Going by accounts of citizens in various areas and civil society members, they said the conversion ratio of complaints into an FIR is low.Joint commissioner Choudhary, however, said overall data on case registration across the city belies such allegations. Overall, as data shows, crime cases reported in Mumbai rose by 21% in 2025, with 64,012 cases compared with 52,718 in 2024. The police report said case detection also increased by 7% from 74% in 2024 to 81% in 2025.Meanwhile, cyber fraud statistics revealed a surge in investment-related fraud, with most linked to share market fraud schemes where investors were promised high returns in short periods. Credit card frauds have dipped, while increases were seen in insurance scams, unauthorised data access, explicit content, system breaches, fraudulent websites, employment scams and email deception.
