Statistics and a familiar story

The statistics are numbing, as only stastics can be. The story they tell, though, isn’t: Crimes against women are alive and kicking like never before. Till September 30, this year were up 50 per cent than in 1996. And this figure is supposed to be a relief to the police because the cases this year are 25 per cent less than in 1998, when the number of such incidents reported were double that in 1996.

Experts and the police agree that the burgeoning crime-against-women graph is worrying, but they are divided over the reasons. Additional DGP S. Kumaraswamy contends that these days, more victims are coming forward to report crimes committed against them. “Also, awareness levels among women have gone up,” he says.

Adds Thilagaraj of the Department of Criminology in the University of Madras: “More cases of eve-teasing and molestation are being reported these days because the law enforcement agency is more vigilant, especially after the incident two years ago in which a student of Ethiraj College, Sarika Shah, lost her life.”

Explaining the increasing number of cases of kidnapping and abduction of women, Thilagaraj says recent studies have shown that several women who are into prostitution today, were forced into the profession after being kidnapped when they were girls.

Only one-third of the crimes get reported, adds Thilagaraj, a fact echoed in the `Victim-Survey’ by his department in Chennai, Coimbatore and Tiruchirappalli. The survey is also being conducted in other cities.

“Besides, the middle class is reluctant to report crime againsts women because they are the `torch-bearers of culture’ in society,” he says. Dr Usharani, a guest lecturer at the Police Training College, adds: “Take the 445 cases of rape reported to the police this year. These are actually only one-tenth of the incidents that have occurred in the State.”

Both observations are in stark contrast to police claims that 88 per cent of crimes against women have been detected this year.

Thirty-three percent of the police personnel in the State are women, there are 58 all-women police stations in Tamil Nadu and the police are said to be “sensitive to women’s causes”. But a stroll in front of the Thousand Lights all-women’s police station revealed a different story last week.

Twenty-four-year-old Shanti, who had lodged a complaint against her in-laws for dowry harassment, says she has been visiting the station for three weeks to get her in-laws summoned. “Each time, they tell me to come some other day as the person in charge is not available,” she says.

Former counsellor at the Feminist Association for Social Action (FASA), Bhavani Janakiraman, says the attitude of the police towards women is one of the reasons why many cases are not coming to light. “Often, the victim has to grease the palms of officers to get her job done. Of the four all-women police stations in Chennai, I would say that Thousand Lights and Tambaram are the worst,” she says.

Society too plays a major role when it comes to creating obstacles for women to come out of the closet and report crimes against them, especially rape. Says Dr Usharani, who had done a study on the psychological trauma of rape victims some few years ago: “I found that a rape victim in India recuperates negatively unlikely in the West. This is due to the social structure.”

She adds: “The clauses that talk about rape in the Indian Penal Code are vague, and can be manipulated easily against the victim. With an injured mind, often she is not able to convince law-keepers that she has been raped. The result is that she prefers to keep her mouth shut to either avoid the rigours of the process of law or insult from the society.”

Totally, police records show 6,139 instances of crime against women till September 30 in Tamil Nadu. And over the last four years, there has been 52.33 per cent increase in the crime against women.