Statistics Show More Muslim Convicts than Hindu, But What's Behind these Numbers? https://thewire.in/rights/statistics-show-more-muslim-convicts-than-hindu-but-whats-behind-these-numbers Malvika Tyagi Might socioeconomic and political factors and police prejudice explain the proportion of Muslims being higher in the total number of convicts in India vis-à-vis their population proportion in the country?
looking at the maximum percentages that Muslim convicts can take over the studied time period, Muslims comprised approximately 11.9%, 9.2%, 11.54%, 26.35%, 8.83% respectively of the population in each of the aforementioned states, but comprised approximately 22.8%, 19.2%, 31.6%, 52.8%, 28.8% of the convicts in these states.
I ran a simple OLS (Ordinary Least Squares) regression (an econometrics tool) that assessed the impact of socioeconomic and political factors (poverty, unemployment, educational level) on the ratio of Muslim to Hindu convicts. The control variable in the OLS regression was the Muslim population relative to the Hindu population. The preliminary results of the regression test revealed that the number of Muslim convicts relative to Hindu is adversely affected or increased by the higher relative rural poverty and urban unemployment of the minority, but favourably affected or decreased by the higher relative education indicators of the minority. Furthermore, when a higher percentage of state legislative assembly seats are occupied by the minority community, their relative conviction is lower.
the Status of Policing in India Report (SPIR) of 2019, which categorically mentions that the data its researchers collected found that police personnel seem to hold a significant bias against Muslims. 