Crime Against Women

Woman, the other half of the world, a creature, nurture, survivor, all in all, a fighter throughout her life. A woman, especially in India, has been treated as an object, and a massive number of cases are proof of crimes against women.

From birth or maybe before, a girl /woman could become a victim of a crime or target of a crime. At every stage of her life, a woman quietly suffers, or even if she raises her voice, it is silenced or suppressed.

Rape

Rape is one of the most heinous cruelties committed on a woman in our society. It is known to be the most common crime against women in India. The average national crime rate for rape is 4.3 per lakh population. India has a long history of rape cases; every time an incident comes into the limelight, it becomes 

A middle-aged Dalit woman was allegedly gang-raped in Uttar Pradesh’s Jewar area by men known to her on Sunday. 10th October 2021. The key accused, a drug addict, had dragged the woman into the fields and forced himself on her, the police officer said.

• One of the oldest cases widely covered by the media was the 1973 case of nurse Aruna Shanbaug. Aruna was raped by a sweeper, Sohanlal Bhartha Walmiki while working as a junior nurse at KEM Hospital in Mumbai.

• Priyadarshini Mattoo was a law student; She was raped and murdered by Santosh Kumar Singh at her house in New Delhi. The trial court had cleared Santosh, but the Delhi High Court made a landmark decision and sentenced him to death due to media pressure.

• The most scandalous of all rape cases has to be the Delhi gang rape of 2012. The girl was raped by six men while travelling on a bus with her friend in New Delhi. The girl was brutally violated by an iron rod and later died due to her horrific injuries.

• In 1992 Bhanwari Devi was gang-raped by five high caste men of Bhateri village when she got involved in speaking against child marriage. Her low caste and gender were denying her justice.

Sexual Harassment at Workplace

Sexual harassment is something almost every woman experience in her professional life at least once. Where man subject’s woman to an unwelcome act of physical intimacy like grabbing, brushing, touching, pinching, eve-teasing, makes an unwelcome demand or request directly or by implication for sexual favours any other form of unwelcome conduct of a sexual nature. 

• The Viral Fever’s founder Arunabh Kumar had charges of workplace sexual harassment by his ex-employee. She revealed its details through an anonymous post on Medium, and it took the nation by storm. As a result, Kumar had to resign from his position as company CEO.

Acid Attack

Acid attack is a form of violence against a woman defined as the act of throwing acid or a similarly corrosive substance onto the body of another to disfigure, maim, torture, or kill.

The attackers throw acid at their victims, usually at their faces, burning them, damaging skin tissue, often exposing and sometimes dissolving the bones. The life-long consequences of these attacks include blindness, as well as permanent scarring of the face and body, along with far-reaching social, psychological, and economic difficulties.

• One of the most talked about the case was of “Laxmi Aggarwal, she was attacked in 2005, at the age of 15, when she refused a marriage proposal of a man twice of her generation.

Pornography/Cyber Threat

Pornography is visual or printed content containing the explicit description or display of sexual organs or activity that stimulates sexual excitement or seems lewd from a responsible reader standpoint.

Pornography spreads through various mediums, including books, magazines, photographs, animation, sound recording, film, video and websites. Increased use of information technology, such as the Internet and communication devices, has led to a proliferation of illegal websites containing obscene and pornographic materials. 

Domestic Violence

Domestic violence has defined as where a man in a relationship misuses power to control the woman. It is the establishment of fright in a relationship through violence that includes other forms of abuse.

The violence may involve physical abuse, threats and sexual assault. It can be more subtle at times, such as making someone feel worthless, not letting them have any money, or not allowing them to leave home.

Cruelty/Dowry demand

Dowry is also among the highest crimes against women. A new Section Section 498A was incorporated into the Indian Penal Code to decrease these cases.

According to this Section, whoever being a husband or relative of a woman’s husband subjects her to cruelty shall be punished with imprisonment for a term that may extend to three years and a fine. However, this has not helped as the cases are still on a higher side, and several women encounter this issue in their life.

• In February 2021, Ayesha Banu, a 24-year-old woman from Ahmedabad, recorded a video of herself speaking about the harassment she was facing for dowry from her husband before she jumped into the Sabarmati river and committed suicide.