India, May 8 -- The 2024 report on Crime in India, released on Wednesday, is significant because it is the first after the adoption of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita (BNS), the new criminal code that replaced the colonial-era Indian Penal Code in 2024. The BNS was in force for half the calendar year in 2024. One way of understanding the impact of BNS on the system is to see whether the criminal justice system has shown improvement under the new criminal code. Six months and teething troubles are early days to reach a conclusive judgment. Now for the data in the report. The annual compendium of statistics on the criminal justice system, released by the National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB), which works under the home ministry. The 2024 numbers show that there has been a fall in the number of criminal cases recorded in the country. While conventional crime fell, new-age, new-economy crimes such as cybercrime continue to rise. Given the anecdotal reports of incidents like digital arrests and phishing and the overall rising trend in cybercrime numbers, law enforcement across the country should be better equipped to deal with them. The decline in the number of overall crimes may not necessarily be because of better law enforcement. Crime statistics, at least on the margins, are often a result of how they are recorded. More importantly, the criminal justice system's efficacy in dealing with these cases, as reflected in charge-sheeting and conviction rates, has not improved commensurately with reported crime rates. The charge-sheeting rate of IPC/BNS crimes decreased marginally: from 72.7% in 2023 to 72.1% in 2024. Pendency increased from 29.2% to 31.2%. Is this a result of entrenched, overworked investigators and the judiciary? Can this problem be solved without radical judicial reforms and capacity enhancement? The questions are not new. Nor are the answers. An intent in providing resources as well as a nudge to the system could help....