Domestic violence cases shot up during the lockdown as men's movements were severely curtailed.
Image credit: Danish Ismail/Reuters
Shazia’s husband first started harassing her for working night shifts with male colleagues, then had an affair, and eventually walked out on her and their two-year-old son in 2014. “I was still at work when he packed his bags and left,” she said. “He hasn’t even called since then.”
After he refused to abide by a court ruling directing him to pay child support, Shazia filed a case against him at the commission this month. He didn’t turn up at the hearing where she pleaded her case, but sent his younger brother, an uncle and a neighbour. The brother authoritatively pulled out a piece of paper, stating it was a “notice issued to her to resolve the matter”. What he claimed to be a legal notice was actually the diktat of a mohalla (neighbourhood) committee made up of men. Rebuking him, Nayeema Mehjoor, the head of the commission, refused to acknowledge the document.
A few kilometers from the commission, in the city’s Rambagh area, is a women’s police station. According to Station House Officer Gulshan Akhtar, they receive over 10 new cases of crimes against women, including domestic violence, every day – a claim supported by the commission.
On December 24, squatting outside the station – which, unlike its name, has more male than female personnel – was 28-year-old Tabasum, who has accused her husband and in-laws of physical abuse and mental torture. She said that two months into her marriage, her sister-in-law and mother-in-law started confining her and denying her food. The assault has left marks on her face and body. “My husband once tried to push me through a window in the attic,” she recalled.
Silenced
In Kashmir, like elsewhere in the country, incidents of violence against women, especially at home, are swept under the carpet for multiple reasons. Chief among them is the fear of being ostracised by society, owing to selective interpretations of religion and traditions. But just as important a factor is the decades of conflict in the state that overshadows all other aspects of life.
Shazia Manzoor, a coordinator at the University of Kashmir’s Department of Social Works, said violence against women is not new and “can be linked both to the patriarchal set-up as well as the political scenario of the state”. Most women who suffer violence at home do not speak about it because of the indoctrination they have received since childhood that women have to “make adjustments”, she said. Even those who file complaints maintain that they would rather go back to their abusive spouses than live as single mothers.
According to Nayeema Mehjoor of the State Women’s Commission, where once marriage and family were strong institutions, today everything is “about valueless education”. She added, “We focus on everything except the basic institution, home, because we no longer feel that the home is an institution to be protected.”
Complicating matters is the absence of people’s participation in dealing with the problem, ignorance of official mechanisms of redressal, and lack of awareness. Tabasum, who had never been to a police station before, had no idea that a body like the State Women’s Commission even existed.
Summer violence
During the summer unrest – as the Kashmir Valley erupted in an uprising against the state and normal life was under lockdown for over four months starting July – cases of domestic violence increased as a result of men being confined to their homes and the lack of individual space, said Mehjoor. During this period, the commission remained open and heard out five to six women on average every day, she added.
As for women, the imposition of communication blockades and curfews kept them from socialising in their neighbourhoods – a practice that Mehjoor called “a sort of catharsis”.
Last year, 2,009 cases were registered under the Domestic Violence Act against 4,157 cases in the past five years combined, the state government revealed. However, according to data collated by the Crime Branch of the Jammu and Kashmir Police, 4,825 cases of crimes against women were registered in the state during 2014 and 2015. Of these, 11 were cases of dowry deaths and 868 were of “cruelty by husband” – 400 registered in 2015 and 468 the year before.
Illegal interference
Making matters worse, the lack of awareness among people about official grievance redressal bodies has led to rampant interference by unofficial committees. Mehjoor said the menace of mohalla committees has grown over the past two decades. Even though these hold no legal standing, “people still go to them as courts take time while they are seen as immediate relief”.
According to police officer Gulshan Akhtar, most people don’t come to the police with such complaints, preferring to reach out to these committees instead. Even the few who do approach the police “first go to the mohalla committees and then they consider approaching the courts or the police”. She added, “All cases [at the Rambagh police station] go there first and then come here.”
And instead of mediating, these neighbourhood committees often end up taking “a decision unilaterally without consulting the women”, said Shazia Manzoor of the University of Kashmir. “Women are still considered property and men their rightful custodians who have the authority to deal with it in the manner they find appropriate,” she said.
For instance, a businessman in his 30s divorced his wife through the controversial triple talaq method. The divorce papers, issued by his mohalla committee, bore his signature and those of his wife’s brothers, but not of the wife herself.
The neighbourhood committees are encouraged to meddle because despite their lack of legal authority, the police record their statements along with those of the involved parties.
Of late, Mehjoor said, there has also been a practice of muftis from seminaries such as the Dar-ul-Ulooms being brought in as complainants or respondents, and they seek settlement through religious principles. And the commission has increasingly had to rely on religious edicts while deciding cases. As a result, Mehjoor said the commission has requested the government to “authorise a single religious body to issue fatwas”. She recalled a case where the callous issuance of fatwas had compelled “a woman to remarry four times”.
Yet another problem in dealing with cases of domestic violence is the lack of women police officers, said a senior police official who did not want to be identified. Also, the police may often be discouraged from carrying out their duty towards the victim as a result of belonging to the same society. “No policeman would want to do the right thing and risk being blamed for un-Islamic acts,” he said.
Names of victims have been changed to protect their identities.
This article was first published on Scroll.in