Splitsville after live-in relationship: Punjab women’s panel chief says got 100 complaints in two months

“In the past two months, I have received at least 100 such complaints. The Supreme Court has directed that such cases are acceptable, but we do not know how to deal with such women, who want to register a case of rape against their partner,” she said.

Raj Lalli Gill said most of the complainants were girls, mostly students, who were staying away from home and studying in other cities.

“After being in a live-in relationship for four to five years and then splitting up, now these women partners have been approaching me with a complaint that their male partners do not want to get married to them on the grounds of incompatibility. The women partners say they are being scorned. They ask me to direct the police to get their live-in partner (male) booked in a case of rape.”

Raj Lalli Gill also said that she had received some complaints in which the woman live-in partners were alleging that their male partners had clicked their pictures of intimate moments and were blackmailing and threatening them to post the photographs online. “We find it difficult to handle such cases. On the one hand there is a law of the land, and on the other we have our own social system. We are caught between them,” she said.

She also said that in several cases, young women were in a relationship with married men having children, and after some point of time, they (men) returned to their families. “Now, when these women see a bleak future for them, they come to us.”

The PSWC chairperson said that maximum complaints received by the commission were of domestic violence, both mental and physical, and also of old parents being abandoned by their sons.

“The cases of domestic violence are there. Mostly, women are the complainants. Then there are cases of children abandoning their old parents after taking their property. It’s shocking that such cases are not just from the lower or middle class families but also from the elite.”

Raj Lalli Gill, who recently visited Rupnagar and Amritsar jails, said that she came across many young women in the jail who were caught working in illegal immigration centres and call centres. “I advise women to sign an agreement with their employers before working with the immigration firms, so that they do not bear the brunt of law for the illegal activities, in any, of such firms. The police may think they (women) are running the show at such centres, but in reality they would be only be mere employees.”