Free legal aid clinic empowers Bengaluru's marginalised women

Bengaluru: The Alternative Law Forum (ALF), in collaboration with Action Aid and Slum Mahileyara Sanghatane, organised a free full-day legal aid clinic for marginalised women under its People’s Law Desk initiative at Janadhikara Sampanmoola Kendra in the Anjanappa Garden slum, Cottonpet.

About 55 women from slum and working-class communities attended the camp, which offered consultations on matrimonial disputes, property issues and the challenges of securing essential documents such as caste and income certificates.

Advocate Syeda Saba from ALF highlighted the systemic barriers.

"The most important thing we are facing is that there is a difficulty to get documentation in place because the law requires them to have a specific kind of documentation available,” she said. “The caste certificate cannot be made on the basis of the mother’s document, but it has to be made by the father’s document,” often a problem when fathers have not studied.

The clinic also provided a safe space for women to discuss domestic violence, a recurring issue in slum communities.

Syeda noted that “the police assume that marriage as an institution needs to be protected instead of taking any action for their protection”.

She said the camp enabled women to assert their right to dignity. “Today they were able to acknowledge that, ‘this is not okay, I cannot be treated like this by my husband. I deserve dignity’,” she added.

ALF plans to hold such clinics every two to three months to build trust and address recurring issues. “Our long-term goal is to do this in a systematic manner where we are able to do this every few months,” Saba said.

Common legal hurdles 

• Domestic violence, divorce, child custody disputes, forced abortions.
  

• Property ownership conflicts.
  

• Problems obtaining birth, death and income certificates.
  

• Lack of personal identification documents. 
  

• Challenges in securing caste certificates, especially for migrants lacking school records or where husbands have not studied.