‘I’ll MARRY YOU’ — How False Marriage Promise Dominate Haryana, Punjab Rape Cases
Haryana, Punjab Rape Cases: NCRB 2024 data shows that partners, live-in companions and men who promised marriage account for nearly half of all rape cases in India — 13,879 out of 29,536. In Haryana the figure is 45.7%, in Punjab 40.8%. And in 99% of cases across the region, the offender was not a stranger. He was someone she already knew.
Arvind Chhabra
Chandigarh, May 10
There is a persistent, damaging image of rape in public imagination: a woman attacked by an unknown man, in the dark, somewhere unsafe. It shapes how families restrict their daughters, how neighbourhoods discuss safety, and how victims are judged when they come forward. The National Crime Records Bureau’s Crime in India 2024 report, released by the Ministry of Home Affairs, provides the most comprehensive demolition of this image yet.
Across all of India in 2024, 28,597 of 29,536 rape cases — 96.8% — involved an offender who was known to the victim. Only 939 cases nationally involved a stranger. And within that universe of known offenders, the single largest sub-category — 13,879 cases, or 47% of all rape cases in India — falls under label: ‘Friends or Online Friends or Live-in Partners on Pretext of Marriage / Separated Husband.’ Nearly half of India’s rape cases, in the government’s own count, involve a man in some form of intimate or close personal relationship with the woman he attacked.
Punjab and Haryana are not outliers in this national pattern. They are its mirror. In Punjab, 472 of 475 rape offenders (99.4%) were known to the victim — only 3 were strangers. In Chandigarh, that figure reaches its absolute limit: all 96 rape offenders were known to the victim. Zero strangers. In Haryana, 90.4% of offenders were known.
Haryana, Punjab rape cases: Who Is Committing Rape — In Our Region and Across India?
There’s a category in NCRB report: ‘Friends or Online Friends or Live-in Partners on Pretext of Marriage / Separated Husband’ — a category covering intimate and quasi-intimate relationships. Highlighted row.
| Who raped her? | Punjab | Haryana | Chandigarh | India Total |
| TOTAL rape cases (2024) | 475 | 1,391 | 96 | 29,536 |
| Known to victim — total | 472 (99.4%) | 1,257 (90.4%) | 96 (100%) | 28,597 (96.8%) |
| — Family member | 49 (10.3%) | 116 (8.3%) | 6 (6.3%) | 2,134 (7.2%) |
| — Friends / online friends / live-in partners / pretext of marriage / separated husband | 194 (40.8%) | 636 (45.7%) | 23 (24.0%) | 13,879 (47.0%) |
| — Neighbour / employer / other known person | 229 (48.2%) | 505 (36.3%) | 67 (69.8%) | 12,584 (42.6%) |
| Stranger (unknown) | 3 (0.6%) | 134 (9.6%) | ZERO (0%) | 939 (3.2%) |
Source: NCRB Crime in India 2024
The largest single category of offender in Punjab — 229 cases (48.2%) — falls under neighbours, employers and other known persons. But the category that most directly captures intimate betrayal is labelled by NCRB as ‘Friends or Online Friends or Live-in Partners on Pretext of Marriage / Separated Husband’: 194 cases in Punjab (40.8%), 636 in Haryana (45.7%), and 13,879 across India (47%). These are people trusted with emotional and often physical intimacy — and that trust became the instrument of the crime.
It is important to be precise about what this column contains. The NCRB does not break it further — it does not separately count live-in partners versus online friends versus separated husbands versus those who promised marriage. The 194 Punjab cases and 636 Haryana cases are a combined count across all these sub-types. What they share — and what makes them a coherent category — is that the offender and victim had, or had recently had, some form of personal or intimate relationship. That is what the data is measuring. That is what it is finding, at scale, nationally.
This Is India’s Pattern — Punjab, Haryana Sit Squarely Within It
The table below shows this is not a regional aberration — it is a national phenomenon, with Punjab and Haryana in the middle of the pack.
| Rank | State | Intimate-relation cases* | Total rape cases | % share |
| 1 | Gujarat | 467 | 661 | 70.7% |
| 2 | Kerala | 624 | 940 | 66.4% |
| 3 | Maharashtra | 2,037 | 3,091 | 65.9% |
| 4 | Jharkhand | 650 | 1,073 | 60.6% |
| 5 | Chhattisgarh | 702 | 1,171 | 59.9% |
| 6 | UP | 1,718 | 3,209 | 53.5% |
| 7 | Tamil Nadu | 225 | 419 | 53.7% |
| 8 | Karnataka | 319 | 671 | 47.5% |
| 9 | MP | 1,448 | 3,061 | 47.3% |
| 10 ★ | Haryana | 636 | 1,391 | 45.7% |
| 11 | Rajasthan | 2,129 | 4,871 | 43.7% |
| 12 | Bihar | 507 | 1,165 | 43.5% |
| 13 ★ | Punjab | 194 | 475 | 40.8% |
| 14 | Assam | 340 | 927 | 36.7% |
| — ★ | Chandigarh | 23 | 96 | 24.0% |
| — | India Total | 13,879 | 29,536 | 47.0% |
Source: NCRB Crime in India 2024
The table makes one thing unmistakable: intimate betrayal as a driver of rape is not a Punjab or Haryana problem. It is an India problem. In Gujarat, 70.7% of rape cases fall in this category. In Kerala — 66.4%. In Maharashtra — 65.9%. Punjab at 40.8% and Haryana at 45.7% are not at the top of this list — they are in the middle of a national pattern where nearly every state shows the same truth. The rapist is not the stranger outside. He is the person she was in a relationship with, or thought she was.
Chandigarh: Every Offender Known, Half the Victims Are Children
Chandigarh’s rape data stands apart even within this grim regional picture. The city registered 96 rape cases in 2024 — a rate of 16.6 per lakh women, the highest of any state or Union Territory in India. Every single offender was known to the victim.
The breakdown of Chandigarh’s 96 known offenders: 6 were family members, 23 fell into the friends/live-in/intimate-relationship category, and the remaining 67 — 69.8% of all cases — were neighbours, employers or other known persons. A zero in the stranger column.
What compounds this data is who the victims are. Of Chandigarh’s 96 rape victims in 2024, 47 — nearly half (49%) — are children below the age of 18: 4 children aged 6–12, 30 aged 12–16, and 13 aged 16–18. Every one of these children knew their attacker.
And yet Chandigarh’s chargesheeting rate for crimes against women is only 63.5% — meaning in more than a third of cases, police do not file a charge sheet in court.
A city where every rape victim knew her attacker, where half the victims are children, and where 36% of cases do not proceed to court. That is Chandigarh’s specific failure, written in three numbers.
ALSO READ: Chandigarh tops India in Senior Citizen Crime
Who Are the Victims? Age Profile of Rape Survivors, 2024
| State / UT | Children below 18 | 18–30 yrs | 30–45 yrs | 45–60 yrs | 60+ yrs |
| Punjab | 0 (0%) | 321 (67.3%) | 147 (30.8%) | 8 (1.7%) | 1 (0.2%) |
| Haryana | 3 (0.2%) | 848 (61.1%) | 479 (34.5%) | 59 (4.2%) | 2 (0.1%) |
| Chandigarh | 47 (49.0%) | 35 (36.5%) | 14 (14.6%) | 0 (0%) | 0 (0%) |
| India | 792 (2.7%) | 19,489 (66%) | 8,316 (28%) | 1,056 (3.6%) | 89 (0.3%) |
Source: NCRB Crime in India 2024
Punjab’s zero in the child victim column is a figure that demands explanation. Nationally, 2.7% of rape victims are children. In Himachal Pradesh — a neighbouring hill state — 194 of 324 rape victims (59.9%) are children. In Jharkhand, 82 of 1,073 are children.
When She Reports: The Second Failure
The NCRB data records what is registered. The chargesheeting rate — what proportion of registered cases result in police filing a charge sheet, beginning court proceedings — reveals the second layer of failure.
| 2022 cases | 2023 cases | 2024 cases | Rate/lakh women | Chargesheeting rate | |
| Punjab | 5,572 | 5,258 | 5,348 | 36.3 | 75.0% |
| Haryana | 16,743 | 15,758 | 13,945 | 96.4 | 58.8% |
| Chandigarh | 325 | 371 | 452 | 78.6 | 63.5% |
| India Total | 4,45,256 | 4,48,211 | 4,41,534 | 64.6 | 77.2% |
Source: NCRB Crime in India 2024
Haryana’s chargesheeting rate of 58.8% is one of the lowest in India — meaning more than 4 in 10 women who reported rape to Haryana police in 2024 saw no charge sheet filed. Chandigarh’s 63.5% is not much better. Even Punjab’s 75%, above the national average of 77.2%, means 1 in 4 registered rape cases goes no further than the police station.
These numbers exist alongside a paradox: Haryana’s total crimes against women have been falling — from 16,743 in 2022 to 13,945 in 2024. Chandigarh’s have been rising — from 325 in 2022 to 452 in 2024, a 39% increase in two years. Whether that rise reflects more crime, more reporting, or both, is a question the data alone cannot resolve — but it is one Chandigarh administration must answer.
Key Findings:
- Punjab: 472 of 475 rape offenders (99.4%) were known to the victim — only 3 were strangers
- Chandigarh: 96 of 96 rape offenders (100%) were known to the victim — zero strangers in 2024
- Haryana: 1,257 of 1,391 rape offenders (90.4%) were known to the victim
- Punjab: 194 cases (40.8%) involve friends, online friends, live-in partners, marriage pretext, or separated husbands
- Haryana: 636 cases (45.7%) fall in the same intimate-relationship category — nearly half all rape cases
- India: 13,879 of 29,536 rape cases (47%) nationally fall in this intimate-relationship category
- Chandigarh rape rate: 16.6 per lakh women — highest of any state or UT in India
- Chandigarh: 47 of 96 rape victims (49%) are children below 18 years — every one knew their attacker
- Punjab officially records zero child rape victims in 2024 — a figure that demands scrutiny
- Haryana chargesheeting rate: 58.8% — 4 in 10 rape cases never reach court
- Chandigarh crimes against women: up 39% in two years — 325 (2022) to 452 (2024)
The Real Risk
When 47% of rape cases across India — and 13,879 women in a single year — are attacked by someone they were in an intimate or close personal relationship with, this is no longer a regional story. It is a national reckoning.
Official government data from 2024 tells us that in Punjab and Chandigarh, the dangerous stranger is a near-fiction. The real risk is closer: a partner, a friend, an online acquaintance, a neighbour, a man who shared a meal or a bed or a promise with the woman he attacked. This holds true in Gujarat, in Kerala, in Maharashtra, in Haryana — across the map.
Quite good investigation but still I wonder live in relationship has no prior certainty of maturation of Relationship, so in that space does the prior agreement to stay together counts for rape in case it doesn’t mature. This phenomenon appears to be short term staying together nothing More