Lockdown might have brought life to a standstill but cases of domestic violence have continued to go north.
Sample this: Shushma (not real name) was beaten up by her husband in Lucknow as she forgot to spice up the arhar daal with garlic and chilli last week.
In a startling revelation, National Commission for Women Chairman Rekha Sharma claimed that during lockdown, the number of domestic violence cases went up by almost 50 per cent. What is ominous is that UP is leading the infamous pack with the state accounting for over 40 per cent cases between March 25 and May 11.
“In fact, cases of domestic violence have gone up during lockdown. We do not have off-line figures, but online figures went north by almost 50 per cent as compared to corresponding period last year,” Sharma told ‘The Pioneer’ over phone from Delhi.
The NCW received 832 online complaints from March 25 when lockdown was announced till May 11. Of these, 350 cases were from Uttar Pradesh alone, accounting for almost 42 per cent of the cases.
“Some cases are bizarre. Husbands beat up their wives over trivial issues while in some cases, women complained that physical torture they had been undergoing for the last many years had only got worse during lockdown, forcing them to lodge complaints,” she said.
Then there were complaints like women not being allowed to speak to their parents and when they insisted, they were assaulted. In some cases, the husband came home drunk even as the family struggled to get two square meals and when the wife questioned, she was thrashed.
Sharma lamented that despite the level of education going up among women, many of them still did not know their legal rights.
“Their mindset is that husbands can beat them as they have seen their mothers being assaulted. So, when they are in the midst of a similar situation, they do not mind it and blame luck for it,” she said.
Experts working in this field were unanimous that domestic violence cases were far more than what was reported. They held factors like poverty, nagging in-laws or husband with vices like alcohol or drug addiction as reasons behind violence within homes.
“The situation accentuated during lockdown as families have been forced to stay indoors for a long time. Domestic violence often increases in times of crisis and with restrictions being imposed, couples become frustrated and bicker. These changes have made husbands cranky and stressful, who in turn subject wives to more abuse,” convenor of People’s Vigilance Committee on Human Rights (PVCHR), Lenin Raghuvanshi said.
Realising that women were on the receiving end during lockdown, the National Commission for Women released a WhatsApp number (7217735372) where affected women could lodge complaints. The NCW chairperson said that the number was advertised during telecast of Ramayana and Mahabharat during lockdown.
Incidentally, the increase in domestic violence is not confined to India only. Even, the World Health Organisation (WHO) has claimed that globally, countries have been reporting up to a 60 per cent spiral in emergency calls by women victims subjected to violence by their partners in April this year, as compared to last year.
The UN Agency for Sexual and Reproductive Health estimated that there would be 31 million more cases of domestic violence world-wide, if lockdown continued for another six months.
