In India, if anything has stood as an obstacle in the path of the country’s development then it has been the growth rate of crimes against women. History is evident that women have always been mistreated in society. Abstruse customs such as sati, dowry, sex being considered as a taboo in India, and women’s general low status have further provoked these offenses.
One of the offenses that pop up in news almost every other day is violence against women be it domestic or sexual. One of the offenses that pop up in news almost every other day is violence against women be it domestic or sexual. Violence against women and girls in India is prevalent, with many females continuing to suffer from discrimination and violence in everyday life, despite innovative legislative initiatives over the latest years, caused by pressure from women’s rights movements, media, and public campaigns. The sexual violence affects women in Dalit, Adivasis, and other marginalized communities disproportionately. Their exclusion from society also restricts their access to justice paths.
When it comes to domestic violence, there is a wider perspective to it than we know. An incest study was performed in India in 1999 with 348 urban females of the upper and middle classes. Nearly half reported being molested; a third was ten years of age and younger when they suffered severe sexual abuse including rape (Anuja Gupta 1996) by their family members and friends. Women are being sold, trafficked as brides, held as slaves, raped, and distributed among siblings. Eighty-eight percent of honor killing occurrences are inflicted by members of the family. Women are compelled to get married, pregnant, sterilized, prostituted, and pornography.
An extension of domestic violence is dowry death. Dowry relates to violence perpetrated against brides by husbands and in-laws of the bride either as a penalty for failing to provide adequate dowry during the marriage or failing to satisfy ongoing dowry after marriage requirements. As practiced in India, the cultural dowry regime elicits significant violence against females. This takes the form of inter-family abuse for extra assets and cash payments that may inevitably result in the bride’s murder or suicide. Attempts are being made to reduce this abuse of females via law and education. Dowry Prohibition Act, the main means of regulating such harassment since 1961, is commonly considered to have failed.
Dowry can be statistically correlated to female infanticide, female child abandonment, sex-selection contraception, and females missing due to sex-selection technology. Moving further down the rabbit hole we find innumerable instances of female feticide in India. By comparing the census numbers, the decrease in India’s child sex ratio is obvious. The figure was 947 girls per 1000 boys in 1991. Ten years ago, for 1000 children, it had dropped to 927 women. Not very long ago, states like Maharashtra, Gujarat, Punjab, Himachal Pradesh, and Haryana reported a decrease of more than 50 points in the child sex ratio. Notwithstanding these awful figures, the determination of fetal sex and sexual abortion by unethical medical practitioners has now risen to a crore sector of Rs. 1,000 (US$ 244 million).
The other type of offenses against women that usually flood the newspapers are rape and sexual harassment in private and public alike. As early as around 1997 a big number of instances of rape used to stay underreported due to the victim of rape being subjected to social stigma. An exceptional feature case, however, was that unmarried girls exceeded married females as victims and married men exceeded unmarried boys as perpetrators. Sadly, even today, if not as much, the same problem still lingers. A TOI report, citing official information, pointed out that homicide, kidnapping, rape, dowry death, and deadly accidents had seen a rise compared to the year before. As we go into the report’s specifics, the case of rape rose to 243 from 240, and death owing to the event of dowry also saw a spike rise from 14 to 19.
A Global Peace Index 2017 study stated that India was the fourth most hazardous nation for traveling females. The 2017 Gender Vulnerability Index compiled by the Ministry of Women and Child Development declared Bihar, Delhi, Uttar Pradesh, and Jharkhand to be the bottom four when it comes to security. The information highlights the country’s pressing need to guarantee the adequate status of law and order.
Apart from the offenses mentioned, today, cybercrimes against women have also taken a sharp leap in India. The phrase “cybercrime against females” in India involves sexual offenses and sexual abuse via the internet. These offenses include e-mail harassment, cyber-stalking, cyber defamation, morphing, e-mail spoofing, hacking, cyber pornography, etc. One of the first cases to be filed under the Information Technology Act, 2000 was the case of the State of Tamil Nadu v. Suhas Katti. In the aforementioned case, the defendant Katti posted inappropriate, defamatory posts in the yahoo message group regarding a divorced lady and advertised her as a prostitute. He was sentenced pursuant to section 469, 509 of the Indian Penal Code (IPC) and 67 of the IT Act 2000 and was subjected to two years of rigorous imprisonment and fine. The one other case that comes within the ambit of the earliest reported cases under the IT act is the case of DL Prakash v. Superintendent.
SOME IMPORTANT STATUTES PROTECTING THE RIGHTS OF WOMEN IN INDIA
The Prohibition of Child Marriage Act, 2006
Nearly 47 percent of women are forced to marry before the age of 18, according to the International Research Center for Women. As far as child marriages are concerned, India currently ranks 13 in the globe. It has been hard to eliminate the issue of child marriages since child marriage has been embedded into Indian culture and heritage since about a millennium. The Child Marriage Prohibition Act came into force in 2007. This law describes child marriage as a marriage in which the groom or the bride is underage, i.e. the bride is below the age of 18 or the groom is below the age of 21.
Dowry Prohibition Act, 1961
As per this act, during the marriage, the bride or the bridegroom and their family are to be penalized for carrying or offering of dowry.
Medical Termination of Pregnancy Act, 1971
The Act went into force in 1972, and in 1975 and 2002 it was modified. The Act aims to decrease the incidence of unlawful abortion and concomitant maternal mortality and morbidity.
It obviously indicates the circumstances under which a pregnancy may be terminated or aborted and identifies the people who are eligible to do the same.
Preconception and Prenatal Diagnostic Techniques Act, 1994
The PC-PNDT Act was enacted on September 20, 1994, with the intention of banning prenatal diagnostic methods for determining the sex of the fetus resulting in female feticide, that is, to put a check on female feticide was the preliminary object. The few fundamental conditions of the PC-PNDT Act pursuant to Section (18) are:
• Written consent of the pregnant person and prohibition under Section 5 of the Act to communicate the sex of the fetus.
• Maintaining documents in accordance with Section 29 of the Act.
• To make people aware by putting a ban on sex determination on board.
Sexual Harassment of Women at Workplace (Prevention, Prohibition and Redressal) Act, 2013
To guarantee the safety of women in the workplace, this Act seeks to safeguard them in their workplace from sexual misconduct. Sexual harassment in the workplace also includes the use of sexual overtone language, the incursion of personal space as any male colleagues lingering too close for comfort, mild touches, and innuendos.
National Commission for Women Act, 1990
National Commission for Women was set up as a statutory body under this act with Lalitha Kumaramangalam being appointed as the chairperson in 2014. It helps voice issues that otherwise remain in shadows, mainly because of the societal factors that govern the lives of certain women. It plays an important role in promoting the economic empowerment of women.
Equal Remuneration Act, 1976
This act is responsible for addressing the gender wage gap challenges in India, in other words, it promotes equality with respect to remuneration.
Information Technology Act, 2000
As can be clearly apprehended from the preamble of this act, it covers a wide range of commercial and economic crimes, and cybercrimes against women are mainly reported under section 67 of the act.
THE CHALLENGE THAT STILL REMAINS AND WAYS TO ADDRESS THAT
Cases pile up every year, the government comes up with new schemes and statutes are implemented still, every day, newspapers come up with pages dedicated to crimes against women irrespective of whether they are in their forty’s, sixty’s, teenage years or just an infant. Unless women from all corners of the country are made aware of their rights and remedies that are available to them, the situation will never improve. Awareness can be spread through campaigns, drives, and education, most importantly, legal education and young women, privileged or not, should be the priority in this case. The government should provide NGOs, such as Azad foundation and Bhartiya Grameen Mahila Sangh, and similar organizations with reasonable funds to help them spread messages that still linger in the dark. But, in the end, it all comes down to a collective effort by the society which seems to be missing.
