“‘Burking’ or not registering cases is widely prevalent in the police machinery today,” IndiaSpend wrote in 2017. It studied theft in Mumbai, Delhi, Bengaluru and Chennai. Only 6 to 8 percent of theft victims there filed a First Information Report. “The remaining 92-94% are not reflected in any official record.”
In 2013 the Supreme Court ruled in Lalita Kumari v. Government of Uttar Pradesh that registering such a report is mandatory for a cognizable offense. In November 2025 the news agency IANS reported, citing sources, that complaints made by calls to the Delhi police control room were not being turned into reports “in an attempt to project lower crime rates.”