As Covid 19 and the lockdown that has followed people’s life from an immense period of time and has almost taken a quarter year of 2020 the violence against women has been prevalent for so long and for the protection of women from law breakers, the DOMESTIC VIOLENCE ACT 2005 has been implemented by the Indian government and according to this in Savitaben Somabai Bhatiya Vs. state of Gujarat and Ors., the Supreme Court had held that Section 3 of the Domestic Violence Act not only ensures protection of married women but also live-in relationship couples. In china reports have revealed that 90% of the offense have doubled up and are related to the pandemic, in France, the domestic violence has seen an increase of about 30% after the inception of lockdown; due to this, the French Government has pro-claimed that they will open counseling centers, meditation centers and even pay for hotel rooms in order to keep victims of domestic violence safe from the perpetrators and would resolve to take strict action against them. In India, most of the cases were reported from areas which were covered under the red zones and less number of cases came from green zones, rapes and sexual assaults decreased by around 66 % whereas domestic violence cases saw an increase. Moreover, statistics have shown about 86% of cases never sought any help from Regulating Authorities and 77% of the sufferers didn’t even mention the incidents to anyone and thus, were buried in silence.
WHO AND NALSA REPORT ON DOMESTIC VIOLENCE; RESOLUTIONS INTRODUCED SOLVING CRIME AND STEPS TAKEN TO FURTHER CURB UP THESE PRACTICES AND MAKE SOCIETY MORE SAFE
As per reports published by WHO (World Health Organization) in 2013, about 35% of women were subjected to violence by their life partners and more than 80,000 women got killed in 2017 by their intimate or family member when their wasn’t any lockdown but after its Implementation the cases have almost doubled up and states were struggling to deal with it because already most security forces were busy in reducing the spread of coronavirus; adding over to that the recent data of National Legal Services Authority (NALSA) report, in India, maximum number of cases have been received from Uttarakhand around (144) followed by Haryana around (79) and Delhi around (63) respectively. In response to the spike in cases of domestic violence complaints, the National Commission for Women has launched several helpline numbers such as for Whatsapp helpline No. +917217735372, Police helpline-1091/1291, helpline No. of Shakti Shalini (Delhi based NGO)-10920 and at last comes helpline for SNEHA (Mumbai based NGO):98330-52684/91675-35765. According to the ministry of women and child development it has conducted various webinars on how to provide psychological and legal counseling, they have also introduced some pro bono lawyers for helping victims in getting justice and it also directed various district magistrates, civil servant and high-commission officers of various districts to provide logistical help in solving numerous cases that were being reported during lockdown.
LOCKDOWN HAS BROUGHT WORLD TO AN INTERRUPTION WHILE REDUCING CASES SITUATION HAS EXACCERBATED, THE WAY FORWARD
The lives of all those women who are living in an abusive relationship has come to a standstill but for that some hope is still their which will help them in providing new resources, domestic violence is not limited till India but whole world has seen how due to lockdown in largest democracies can still have an impact on social and psychological lives of people. With the extension of lockdown, the sentence of confinement only gets elongated for the victims; in a country where patriarchy has to be challenged every single day various government agencies, NGO helplines have taken the brunt to resolve this issue as soon as possible and provide timely justice to sufferers. The steps taken by various Government Institutions are commendable like recently, Delhi High Court directed for considering in extra vacancy for appointment of protection officers during pandemic time in order to keep review of complaints and taking feedback of complaints from the victims.
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