Bhopal(PTI): More than 33,000 cases have been registered in Madhya Pradesh under the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes (Prevention of Atrocities) Act in the the last four years, the state government has said.

The number of cases registered under this Act has gone up in the state in the past two years, as per the data provided by Home Minister Narottam Mishra in the state Legislative Assembly on Friday in a written reply to a question asked by Congress MLA Jitu Patwari.

The data said that 33,239 cases under the SC/ST (Prevention of Atrocities) Act were registered in a period of around four years between January 2018 and November 2021.

At 9,664, the highest number of such cases were registered in 2020, while as many as 9,249 cases were filed in 11 months of this year. A total of 6,852 cases were registered under this Act in 2018, while this number was 7,474 in 2019, the data said.

Along with the cases registered under SC/ST Act, Patwari in the same question had also sought information about the annual conviction percentage in the cases related to atrocities against women.

The reply said that there has been an annual average conviction of 27 per cent of the cases related to atrocities against women in Madhya Pradesh in the last seven years.

It added that the conviction rate in the cases of atrocities against women was 27.16 per cent in 2015, 27.34 per cent in 2016, 26.98 per cent in 2017, 23.15 per cent in 2018, 29.39 per cent in 2019, 26.10 per cent in 2020 and 28.29 per cent in 2021.

Let the Truth be known. If you read VB and like VB, please be a VB Supporter and Help us deliver the Truth to one and all.



New York, May 13: Melinda French Gates will step down as co-chair of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the nonprofit she and her ex-husband Bill Gates founded and built into one of the world's largest philanthropic organisations over the past 20 years.

“This is not a decision I came to lightly,” French Gates posted on the X platform on Monday. “I am immensely proud of the foundation that Bill and I built together and of the extraordinary work it is doing to address inequities around the world.”

She praised the foundation's CEO, Mark Suzman, and the foundation's board of trustees, which was significantly expanded after the couple announced their divorce in May 2021.

“The time is right for me to move forward into the next chapter of my philanthropy,” French Gates wrote in her statement. She organises some of her investments and philanthropic gifts through her organisation, Pivotal Ventures, which is not a nonprofit.

Bill Gates thanked French Gates for her “critical” contributions to the foundations in a statement, saying, “I am sorry to see her leave, but I am sure she will have a huge impact in her future philanthropic work.”

French Gates will receive $12.5 billion as part of her agreement with Gates, which she said would commit to future work focused on women and families.

The Gates Foundation did not immediately return a request for comment about whether those assets would come from the foundation itself. In an emailed statement, the foundation said that Suzman announced the decision to employees on Monday.

“After a difficult few years watching women's rights rolled back in the US and around the world, she wants to use this next chapter to focus specifically on altering that trajectory,” Suzman said of French Gates.

Suzman said he knew many had joined the foundation in part because of their admiration for her advocacy, especially around gender equity.

“I know how beloved Melinda is here,” Suzman wrote.

The Gates Foundation holds $75.2 billion in its endowment as of December 2023, and announced in January, it planned to spend $8.6 billion through the course of its work in 2024.

The Associated Press receives financial support for news coverage in Africa from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and for news coverage of women in the workforce from Pivotal Ventures.