The 16-day campaign

Every day in Punjab, six women are murdered, eight are raped, 11 are battered and assaulted, and 32 abducted

As the “16 days of Activism against Gender-Based Violence” draw to a close this week, one must question whether the campaign, organised worldwide, was able to secure any response from our state authorities. Advancing the theme, “Peace in the Home to Peace in the World”, the campaign aimed at raising awareness about gender-based violence as a human rights issue and pressurising governments to implement promised measures to end this menace. With six women murdered or subjected to attempted murder, eight raped, 11 battered and assaulted, and 32 abducted every day in Punjab (Punjab DIG Investigation Branch 2013), these objectives are of particular import.

The decision by the Punjab government last week to include a chapter on violence against women in textbooks is one welcome measure. The proposed chapter shall, reportedly, discourage the infliction of violence on women, highlight the causes of this social evil and the mechanisms through which victims may seek redress. The importance of this decision cannot be overemphasised. Education is probably the only means through which mindsets and beliefs that inspire misogynistic practices can be effectively challenged and gradually transformed.

Legal reform is also on the government’s agenda. The Punjab Protection of Women against Violence Bill 2015, which was approved by the provincial cabinet earlier this year, is to be laid before the provincial assembly in the current session. The amended version of the Bill defines violence in broad terms as any offence committed against the human body of a female, including domestic violence, sexual violence, psychological abuse, economic abuse, stalking and cybercrime. The Bill proposes the setting up of a toll-free helpline to provide victims of violence immediate access to guidance and aid. It introduces a set of civil remedies that a family court, upon an application filed before it by a female victim, may award: protection orders, residence orders and monetary orders. The respective aim of these orders is to prevent the further infliction of violence on a female victim by imposing restraints on the perpetrator’s movements; to ensure that the victim is not displaced from her home and is provided a safe and secure place of residence; and to compensate the victim for the suffering inflicted upon her and ensure that she is not left without financial support and maintenance.

The most significant aspect of the proposed law is the establishment of Violence Against Women Centres, designed to help bridge the departmental disconnect in the investigation and prosecution of crimes against women. With the provision of first aid, police reporting, FIR lodging, prosecution, medical examination, forensics and post-trauma rehabilitation under one roof, it is hoped the centres will effectively integrate the relevant departments of the criminal justice system and improve the abysmal conviction rate in cases of violence against women. These procedural reforms are without doubt noteworthy, ensuring at once the safety and rehabilitation of female victims of violence and at the other the efficacy of the legal process

Yet the Bill leaves untouched a gaping lacuna in the law. The infliction of cruel treatment (mental or physical) on a woman by her husband or relative is not a criminal offence in our jurisdiction. Many actually conceive of it as their rightful prerogative. One may wonder whether the Bill can achieve its ostensible purpose of “institut[ing] a protection system for prevention of violence against women” without first criminalising domestic violence — the most pervasive form of violence against women. The law cannot deter a social evil without effectively condemning it.

Interestingly, the proposed law draws much inspiration from the Indian Domestic Violence Act 2005, which set in place a similar system of rehabilitative and protective measures for female victims of violence. Unlike the 2015 Bill, the civil protections introduced under the Indian Act supplemented an existing criminal provision against domestic violence legislated into the Indian Penal Code as s.498A, as far back as 1983. Pursuant to s.498A, any wilful conduct by a husband or a relative that causes grave injury or danger to life, limb or health (whether mental or physical) of the woman, drives her to suicide or harasses her to secure an unlawful demand for any property, is subject to three years’ imprisonment and a fine.

The omission in the otherwise detailed proposal for amendment to our law seems paradoxical. The omission may be inadvertent or the law may have been so framed to avoid real controversies from undermining promulgation. Whatever the case, the Punjab government must make necessary changes to the legal proposal for it to be a holistic and effective measure of reform. 

Published in The Express Tribune, December 8^th,  2015.

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