Representative image with the word 'suicide'.
Credit: iStock Photo
Aweksha, a Bengaluru-based women’s trust, released a report on Saturday on gender-based violence in the domestic context. It offers an insight into the accessibility of domestic violence laws and the plethora of challenges faced by survivors during legal discourse.
The study titled “Law and Its Limitations: An Empirical Study on Domestic Violence and Marital Cruelty,” has been co-authored by Bindu N Doddahatti and Pragya Solanki.
The study makes use of quantitative data from the National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB), City Crime Record Bureau (CCRB), the High Court of Karnataka’s e-court database, National Family Health Survey (NFHS), National Commission for Women (NCW), among other sources.
As per the report, housewives constituted 51.36% of female suicide victims in Bengaluru between 2017 and 2022. Data from the CCRB reveals that accidental fires constitute 28.35% of the total unnatural accidental deaths of women in the city.
It also makes note of the fact that spousal violence has almost doubled in Karnataka. Figures of spousal violence have risen from 24.4% in NFHS-4 to 48.4% in NFHS-5 — ranking Karnataka at the top of the list for the highest rate of domestic violence in the country.
While complaints to the NCW have increased by 65.72% across India, complaints across Karnataka have doubled, increasing by 101% between 2019 and 2022. A majority of these complaints revolve around domestic violence.
The report also sheds light on some common allegations regarding the misuse of domestic violence laws.
While men’s rights groups claim that Section 498A of the BNS, which deals with cruelty against a married woman by her husband or his relatives, is being misused leading to children and elderly relatives of the husband being arrested, data does not back this claim. A majority of persons arrested in Bengaluru under the Domestic Violence sections have been men in the age group 30-45 years. Persons over 60 years of age constitute only 9.83% of total arrests under Section 498A.
The data also showed 4,990 cases were filed under the Protection of Women from Domestic Violence Act (PWDV), 2005, at the district courts of Bengaluru between 2017 and October 2021. This is two times more than the total number of cases filed under Section 498A. “This shows that more women are opting for civil law, rather than criminal law. It debunks the claim that women are getting their husbands and in-laws arrested without reason or out of spite,” explained Pragya.
Despite having a high charge-sheeting rate and a low rate of false cases, conviction rates stand at an all-time low in Bengaluru.
One of the biggest challenges the researchers faced while gathering data for the report was the problem of severe underreporting of cases related to domestic violence, especially in Karnataka.
“Karnataka does not have complete data on the total number of cases filed under the PWDV Act, 2005. We tried our best to get the data through various sources, and the answer we got was that if we got permission from higher officials, they would then gather the data for us,” shared Bindu.
Justice Ashok B Hinchigeri, former director of CEHAT, Sangeeta Rege, and professor and director of Manipal Law School, Sarasu Thomas were also present at the launch event.