New Year, Old Us: Crimes Against Women On An All-Time High

With another new year rolling in, we resolved that better treatment be meted out to all women. However, on January 1 itself, there was a tragic incident which led to the death of a woman, Anjali Singh. The sole breadwinner of her family, Singh was returning home on her scooty when she had a head-on collision with a Maruti Baleno. She was dragged under the car for several kilometres.

Her story is similar to many women who face disgrace and even death because of men who refuse to grow out of their social conditioning that permeates a parochial mindset. They are allowed and encouraged to be violent and aggressive, and display these ‘masculine’ traits without inhibition. And this behaviour is not limited to uneducated sections of society contrary to popular belief. It is all encompassing, irrespective of class.

In another case of assault on women, recently Shankar Mishra, now fired from his company Wells Fargo, urinated on a woman who was his co-passenger in an Air India flight. In an inebriated state, he peed on her belongings and displayed his private parts. Many individuals came to defend him as he was intoxicated, but that is no excuse for obnoxious behaviour. Most men feel the need to show their dominance and power, and such actions committed by them prove their sadistic tendencies.

Why do crimes against women still exist?

Swati Maliwal, the Chairperson of Delhi Commission for Women, strongly believes that such crime still exists because of patriarchy, which is rooted in our entire system. “Whether it is society or governments, you just see shades of it in different intensities all over.”

The different shades range from an inebriated man pissing on a woman to a vicious murder where a woman’s body is dismembered into 35 pieces by her live-in partner. And yet somehow it is the woman who gets blamed, her character questioned, and even after death her memory scorned. But this is not the first time, and it won’t be the last until we achieve an egalitarian society led by feminist values.

“It was very unfortunate that the Parliament of the country has only 14% representation of women and the state legislatures have less than 10%,” said Maliwal. She is not wrong. India ranks a dismal 146th rank in women’s representation in the National Parliament.

Maliwal argues that if women are not actively participating in politics and becoming decision-makers, then crimes against women will continue. Women can raise their voice, but they need to be in positions of power to bring change. “There is a complete lack of political will because if there is effort and right steps are taken by the government then a lot can change,” Maliwal points out.

But the current government is making us move backwards. The holes in the social fabric of our society seemed more prominent when Bilkis Bano’s rapists were freed by the Gujarat government last year soon after our honourable Prime Minister Narendra Modi gave a gut wrenching speech on ‘Nari Shakti’ on the 75th Independence Day celebrations. During the Godhra riots, Bano was gangraped by 11 men, all of whom were released from prison. What’s worse is that they were garlanded and sweets were distributed as if they returned victorious from a battle.

The statistics seem bleak as well as per the National Crime Records Bureau of India which reported an increase of more than 15% on incidents of crime against women in 2021 compared to the year 2020. NCRB reported a rise of 87% in such incidents over a decade, starting in 2011.

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Lack of accountability

Maliwal noted that until there is proper deterrence in this country where people feel scared of committing crimes, not much will change. “The accountability of the police and law is required throughout the investigation and trial,” she said. “Until there is certainty and swiftness of punishment through a particular process, we will remain in this position.”

Her words ring true because “justice delayed is justice denied.” The infamous Nirbhaya case which underscored this inadequacy became a true example of this quote. On the murky night of December 16, 2012, Jyoti Singh was gangraped in a moving bus. Her perpetrators were hanged eight years later due to the cumbersome judiciary process and delayed trials. However, there are cases where justice does not even exist. Case in point, the Arushi Murder case, which is till date an unsolved mystery due to the botched initial investigation, marred by biases and tampering of evidence.

By the end of March 2019, there were 581 Fast Track Courts that sped up the judiciary process, however they had 5.9 Lakh cases pending. Moreover, 56% of the States and UT’s did not have FTCs, including Karnataka, Madhya Pradesh, and Gujarat.

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Shoddy implementation of laws

In another case, a 17-year-old girl was viciously attacked with acid by three men, one of whom was her neighbour. It resulted in significant injury and burns to her face. She was immediately rushed to the hospital.

Acid has been used as a weapon to disfigure women and snatch their point of pride according to societal norms. In another similar case, a jilted lover was nabbed for repeatedly threatening a girl with acid attacks ever since she broke up her six-year-old friendship with him.

Despite the Supreme Court judgement in 2013, where the buying and selling of acid was regulated, more than a thousand acid attacks have been reported in the last five years, according to NCRB data. “Only licensed vendors will be able to sell acid and the buyers should provide a reason for buying along with their ID cards,” said Maliwal. However, the government has failed to implement these orders. The result is that acid can be easily purchased over the counter. The situation is so grievous that now even e-commerce platforms like Flipkart and Amazon openly provide acid sale through their websites.

Maliwal said that a few months back, the DCW submitted a report to the Delhi government where they showcased how acid was being sold openly and it was the responsibility of the senior officers to go on the ground to make inspections. “They need to impose a penalty against the wrongdoers, but that hardly happens,” she highlighted.

Other than rules to protect women from acid attacks, there are a host of laws protecting women from sexual harassment, domestic violence and other heinous crimes. However, these crimes continue due to the inaccessibility of the law in terms of awareness of rights and legal recourse. More than that, the cultural barriers stop women from filing complaints from the start. Sometimes the unfriendly process of the courts dissuades women, while other times there is no guidance or assistance provided at various stages of the judicial proceedings.

Economically weaker, lower caste, and scheduled tribe women may face more discrimination while accessing judicial systems due to poverty and prejudice. In 2020, a Dalit woman was raped by four upper-caste Thakur men in the Hathras district, Uttar Pradesh. After the death of the woman, her body was forcibly cremated by the police without consent of the family, a claim denied by the police.

An Amnesty International report said, “Crimes against Dalits are not properly registered or investigated, conviction rates are low, and there is a large backlog of cases. Police are also known to collude with perpetrators from dominant castes in covering up crimes.” So, the problem faced by lower caste women is double, first due to their caste and then because of their gender.

What we need is a complete overhaul of the judicial system where crimes against women are taken up on priority, stricter laws should be brought and proper implementation must be there, heavier punishments should be given and speedy trials should be the norm. Moreover, prevention is better than cure, so unlearning age-old gender norms through school curriculums and gender sensitisation should be of prime importance. Feminism should be taught in all schools and colleges as a compulsory subject. And mostly, since birth, all parents should teach their sons to be allies to women.

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