The Hindu : Front Page : Crime against women on rise in Erode

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Tuesday, Mar 18, 2008
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Crime against women on rise in Erode

Karthik Madhavan

ERODE: Celebration of womanhood on International Women’s Day has become an annual event, but issues concerning women are not. Especially crime against wedded women, which has come to be a day-to-day event in the district, as elsewhere.

Statistics with the All Women Police Station, Erode, for 2008 says that the station has until recently received 113 complaints or petitions. This works out to an average two petitions a day. Majority of the complaints the station receives has to do with husbands harassing wives, says a policewoman. And, a good number of these harassment complaints are related to dowry. Closely following the harassment cases are petitions seeking temporary separation from husbands and complaining bigamy. The Erode Station, in 2007, received 420 harassment complaints (42.51 per cent of total complaints received) followed by 137 petitions seeking separation (13.8 per cent) and 128 accusing husbands of having extramarital affair (12.95 per cent).

In 2006, however, harassment complaints formed only 8.93 per cent of the 537 complaints. Petitions seeking temporary separation were higher, though, at 22.34 per cent, followed by 13.59 per cent complaints of extramarital affair. Policewomen, who are trained to counsel disputing couples, say a lot of it has to do with misunderstanding, suspicion and inability to adjust to a joint family system.

The National Crime Records Bureau report for 2006 (here is no report available for 2007) suggests that Erode is not alone as far as the rise in complaints goes. Torture cases in the country have increased by 8.2 per cent over the previous year (2005) to reach 63,128 cases. And, dowry cases under the Dowry Prohibition Act, 1961 too have increased by 40.6 per cent to reach 4,504 cases. There, however, appears a flip side to increase in cases as well. Policewomen say persons or groups unconnected with families instigate women to lodge complaints.

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