India’s Safest Cities In 2025
Four years straight, Kolkata stays the safest in India
In India, safety is a fragile promise—an idea constantly bruised by headlines, honking chaos, and the daily tightrope between survival and routine. In a country where everything feels like it’s happening all at once, the notion of a “safe city” can sound almost ironic. But every now and then, exceptions refuses to play along.
Kolkata has once again been declared the safest city in India—for the fourth year in a row—according to the latest National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) data released in October 2025. And honestly, the numbers hold.
In 2023, Kolkata recorded just 83.9 cognisable offences per lakh population, the lowest among 19 major Indian cities with populations above 20 lakh. To put that in perspective, the average crime rate across these metros was 828 per lakh—a chasm so wide it practically underlines how Kolkata exists in its own league. And it’s not an anomaly: the city’s figures have steadily declined over the years—103.5 in 2021, 86.5 in 2022, and now 83.9 in 2023. That’s consistency in a space where most cities are simply treading water.
The NCRB’s data paints a broader picture of urban India’s crime landscape. Across the 19 cities surveyed, total cognisable offences rose from 8.53 lakh in 2022 to 9.44 lakh in 2023—a 10.6 per cent jump. The national crime rate too climbed to 448.3 per lakh, up from 422.2 the previous year. But amid that rise, Kolkata stands out for going in the opposite direction. It’s a rare instance of a metro city becoming safer while the rest of the country gets more volatile.
Why Kolkata?
Part of it is policing that’s actually visible. The city’s been pushing surveillance tech, better street patrols, and a more efficient system of follow-through. The NCRB data also shows that Kolkata has one of the highest charge-sheeting rates in India—94.7 per cent—meaning cases don’t just sit on a desk; they move. Compare that with cities where FIRs are filed and forgotten, and you start to see why Kolkata’s numbers matter.
Trailing behind are Hyderabad, Pune, and Mumbai, each clocking in at roughly 330–355 offences per lakh population—respectable figures but still nowhere close to Kolkata’s. These cities represent India’s evolving urban paradox: highly digitised, economically booming, yet constantly grappling with urban sprawl and safety fatigue. Their inclusion in the top five, though, signals that some metros are learning how to scale up without entirely surrendering control.
The Fine Print
Of course, any honest reading of NCRB data comes with disclaimers. These are reported crimes—statistics that rely on local registration practices, the willingness of victims to come forward, and how different states classify offences. Low numbers don’t automatically translate to fewer crimes; they often mirror how transparently systems function. Analysts have long argued that the NCRB’s datasets are best used to study trends, not absolutes. And yet, trends matter. Kolkata’s steady decline in crime rates across consecutive years isn’t something you can hand-wave away as underreporting. There’s clearly a larger cultural and administrative mechanism at work.
For a city of 14 million that straddles colonial hangovers, infrastructural decay, and modern ambition, Kolkata’s stability feels quietly revolutionary. While Delhi makes headlines for gender-based crimes and Mumbai for economic ones, Kolkata remains largely off the panic grid. Its success lies in being unflashy: in showing that civic order doesn’t have to come at the cost of human sprawl, and that safety, too, is a form of progress.
Top 8 safest cities in India:
Kolkata
Hyderabad
Pune
Mumbai
Coimbatore
Chennai
Kanpur
Ghaziabad