Base instincts

Crimes against women, more specifically sexual harassment, are increasing at an alarming rate in the country.

Molestation & media By Sushanta Talukdar in Guwahati

In an incident that put India to shame, on the night of July 9, a group of men pulled out a 20-year-old girl from an autorickshaw she was trying to get into to return home after coming out of a bar on the busy Guwahati-Shillong road close to the Dispur capital complex of Assam, molested her and even tried to strip her. The assault went on for about 45 minutes in full public view and was recorded by a cameraman of a television news channel even as the girl cried for help from passing vehicles and bystanders. Finally, a senior journalist, Mukul Kalita, and a police officer, who were passing by, shielded her from the molesters before a police team arrived from the Bhangagarh police station, just a kilometre away. The assailants apparently tried to stop the police from taking her away on the pretext that there were no women police, and some of them tried to grope her even after she had got inside the police vehicle. They made desperate attempts to pull her hair with which she had covered her face to prevent it from being captured on camera. Later, a fact-finding team of the National Commission for Women (NCW) found that the girl had sustained burn injuries on her body from cigarettes. The shocking video of the incident went viral on the Internet and sparked off a public outcry across the country. In Assam, thousands of people took to the streets demanding exemplary punishment for the culprits.

The Assam Police identified 17 persons who were found to be involved in the crime and arrested 12 of them on the basis of the video footage of the television news channel. Even 10 days after the incident, they were still on the lookout for the rest, including the key accused, Amarjyoti Kalita, who ironically plays the role of a policeman in a crime-buster serial on a local television channel. The NCW has recommended action against the onlookers as well and against those who were protecting the culprits. Guwahati Senior Superintendent of Police Apurba Jibon Barua was shunted out after the incident. The public outcry also prompted the State government to order a probe by Additional Chief Secretary Emily Das Chowdhary and Chief Minister Tarun Gogoi to put his signature on a long-pending file for the appointment of a Police Commissioner for Guwahati city.

Jyoti Neog, the reporter of News Live Gaurab who covered the incident, resigned following allegations levelled against him by Team Anna member and Right to Information (RTI) activist Akhil Gogoi that the molestation was instigated by the reporter. Neog has alleged that there is a conspiracy against him. The Chief Minister, who also holds the portfolio of Home, has ordered a probe by the Criminal Investigation Department (CID) into the allegation levelled against the reporter.

Atanu Bhuyan, editor-in-chief of the news channel, quit a day after the Chief Minister, while admitting his lapses, commented that the journalist covering the incident had a responsibility to inform the police but he had not done so. Bhuyan said that the Chief Ministers comment could influence the probe and that he was apprehensive that the probe would not be impartial.

He also said that he feared that there could have been pressure from the Chief Minister on the management of the news channel to oust him. Bhuyan was a member of the board of directors of the channel, headed by Riniki Bhuyan Sarma, who is the wife of Assam Health and Education Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma. The Chief Minister refuted Bhuyans allegation and said that even if there was any pressure he should have faced it as it behoved a journalist.

Bhuyan defended Neog and maintained that it was because of the video footage that the police could arrest the molesters. However, the Chief Minister, while acknowledging that the video footage had helped in booking the accused, said the journalist also had a responsibility to inform the police. This has stirred a debate on the role of the media in similar situations. The NCW, meanwhile, removed a member of its fact-finding team, Alka Lamba, for revealing the identity of the victim while addressing the media in Guwahati. Another NCW team comprising Chairperson Mamta Sharma and member Nirmala Samant Prabhavalkar visited Guwahati on July 18 to make a set of recommendations to the State government. The recommendations include providing a government job, compensation and financial aid to the victim; setting up CCTVs and special police pickets with women police in front of all the 128 pubs in Guwahati up to 10-30 p.m; a 24-hour womens helpline and womens cell in every police station; and establishing a fast-track court to take up the case of assault and molestation. The Chief Minister promised to extend financial help of Rs.50,000 to the victim when she met him and expressed her desire to open a beauty parlour. He also promised to look into her housing problem, an official release stated.

Assault on MLA

The incident occurred just 10 days after Rumi Nath, a ruling Congress legislator from Barkhola Assembly constituency in the Barak valley and her second husband, Abu Sahid Zakir Hussain, were beaten up by a mob that barged into their hotel room in Karimganj town. They hid in the toilet in order to escape the attack. However, the attackers dragged them out and assaulted them before the police came and rescued them. Video footage telecast on news channels showed that the attackers continued to kick Rumi Nath even after she had fallen down on the floor. The police have so far arrested 16 people. Several of the accused are still at large. Rumi Naths personal security officers have been suspended for dereliction of duty.

These two incidents reminded the people of the State of another incident in which an Adivasi girl, Laxmi Orang, was stripped naked and assaulted by a mob in broad daylight in the central Beltola locality of Guwahati on November 24, 2007. Only three persons were arrested in the case.

The National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) data on crimes in Assam in 2011 show that the State came third, after Kerala and Delhi, in crimes against women. The rate of violent crimes against women in 2011 increased to 36.6 per cent in Assam, with Kerala recording 44 per cent and Delhi recording 37 per cent. The all-India average of violent crimes against women in 2011 was 21.2 per cent. In 2010, the rate of violent crimes against women in Assam was 33.5 per cent. The Assam government has decided to engage the Tata Institute of Social Sciences to study the reasons for the spurt in crime against women in the State and to suggest remedial measures.

With a population of 3.11 crore (2011 Census), Assam has a total of 8,344 police officials and 53,972 police personnel, of whom only 5.3 per cent are women although the State government has made provision for 10 per cent reservation for women in the police. After the October 30, 2008, serial blasts in Guwahati, the government decided to install CCTV cameras at public places. To date, of the 290 cameras to be installed at 91 places, only 13, seven in Ganeshguri (one of the serial blast sites) and six in Ulubari area, have been installed. In accordance with the project schedule, installation work was to be completed within 12 weeks of confirmed purchase order, which was issued on December 15, 2011. In the light of the recommendation of the NCW to install CCTVs in front of all the 128 pubs in Guwahati, the State government will now be under pressure to expedite the work. Likewise, to implement the NCW recommendation to open a womens cell in every police station and to deploy special police pickets with women police personnel in front of all the pubs, the government will have to recruit more women.

Dr Bhupen Sarmah, director of the Omeo Kumar Das Institute of Social Change (OKDISC), a think tank, says: Crime against women, more specifically sexual harassment, is increasing at an alarming rate in the country as a whole and this issue must be addressed with much seriousness. The factors primarily responsible for the unprecedented rate of sexual harassment must be located in the sociocultural as well as economic spheres instead of reducing the issue merely to a problem of law and order, and then solutions must be found.

Sarmah adds: The patriarchal forms of domination and repression in different segments of Indian society are being reshaped and reformulated by the forces of the unregulated market. The way a woman is projected in the world of advertisement by giant companies, especially through privately owned electronic media, has been dramatically changing the image of a common woman. The commodification of womens bodies for the promotion of commodities produced by giant companies has perhaps reached a stage of unprecedented vulgarisation. These vulgarised images of women continuously propagated by the market forces have severe implications, besides the promotion of a culture of consumerism. In addition to this, there is another important aspect, which has generally been overlooked. Beyond the popular electronic media, Indian society has also been exposed to an unregulated market of cheap electronic gadgets. The size of this market is enormous and its impact is tremendous in influencing youth, especially students and those who are not economically engaged. This cheap market of electronic gadgets has mainly been instrumental in the perpetuation of an extremely vulgar image of women and the idea that women are only for sexual gratification.

According to him factors like rapid changes in values, social norms and institutions have also contributed to the process of reshaping masculinity or patriarchy in this age of market fundamentalism. Therefore, it is necessary to comprehend the entire process of change driven by the market forces. Alongside, it is also pertinent to note the unpreparedness and insensitivity on the part of both the state and society, including the media, while dealing with these changes, he says.

Another extreme crime that goes unnoticed in the State is the attack and murder, mostly on and of women, in the name of witch-hunting. Gita Rani Bhattacharya, State programme director of the Assam Mahila Samata Society, which implements the national Mahila Samakhya programme in Assam, says that culprits go unpunished as the police register witch-hunting incidents as murder cases and fail to gather witnesses. Generally, the majority of residents of a particular village or the village community are involved because of their superstitious belief in the prevalence of witches among them.

Sixteen organisations, which staged a protest against the July 9 molestation incident in Guwahati under the aegis of North East Network, while describing it as barbarous and most disturbing, said in a joint statement that it was not an isolated incident and there was a trend and pattern in it.

What is unfortunate about these crimes is that they are often justified on the premise of a severely gendered moral policing and therefore seek to reinforce patriarchal structures. Further, the constant hype and insensitive projection of such events by the media, particularly the electronic media, has led to a lopsided public opinion about the gendered roles of women, their mobility, dress codes and stereotypical position in society. As if committing the crime is not enough, it has also to be videotaped and telecast and graphically described and published in the news. The objective is not to prevent the recurrence of such incidents but to play with the voyeuristic pleasure of the diseased minds for narrow business interests, the statement said.

It is high time that the state started talking a language which sees a shift from its approach of protecting the victim woman to acknowledging the woman who is an equal to men and hence is entitled to each and every right as a citizen, including her bodily autonomy, the organisations demanded.

Everyday reality By Sagnik Dutta in New Delhi

THE latest data on crime rates released by the NCRB do little to dispel the bad reputation that the National Capital Region has earned over the years as a den of crimes against women. However, statistics barely reveal the institutionalised forms of violence against women in Delhi. While the blatant acts of sexual violence in the city have drawn much criticism from several quarters, the violence enmeshed in the social fabric often goes unnoticed and unreported. These are relatively insignificant incidents that women learn to take in their stride. These categories of violence include harassment of the regional, ethnic other from the north-eastern region and the marginalisation of openly lesbian women.

Despite repeated incidents of violence, the levels of gender sensitisation among the police remain very low. The hostile attitude of the police and the scanty number of women in the police force make reporting of crimes difficult.

As per the latest NCRB report, Delhi reported 17.6 per cent of the total number of rape cases in the country in 2011. Among 53 cities, Delhi accounted for 13.3 per cent of the total number of crimes against women, with 4,489 registered cases. Delhi also reported the highest crime rate of 12.4 per cent compared with the national average of 2.9 per cent.

However, this official record is hardly revealing of the everyday acts of violence that women encounter in the city and the general atmosphere of insecurity and paranoia generated by them. Speaking to Frontline, Sehba Farooqui, Delhi general secretary of the All India Democratic Womens Association (AIDWA), outlined some of the reasons for the low rates of registration of crimes against women. Women still face harassment and hostility when they approach the police station to register a complaint. At present, women comprise only 7.8 per cent of the police force. The Crimes Against Women cells of the Delhi Police have an FIR [first information report] registration rate of only 12 per cent. Increased gender sensitisation among the police is essential to encourage women to report incidents of violence. Also, an improved public transport system will make women feel more safe on the streets.

Annie Raja, general secretary of the National Federation of Indian Women, put the blame for the systemic violence against women squarely on neoliberal economic policies. Neoliberal economic policies have led to the commodification of women, which has a direct link with the rising incidents of violence against them. There is no dearth of legislation against crimes against women, but theres little political will on the ground to translate it into action.

A pattern of violence in recent years has been attacks against women working late night shifts in BPOs and call centres. There has been a spate of incidents in Gurgaon and Noida, and women working in call centres feel that the security arrangements could be improved.

Shubhangini Shukla, a 25-year-old executive with a call centre in Noida, pointed out some specific problems with the security arrangements. We generally have late night shifts, which get over at about 2 a.m. There is a security guard in the cab when a female member has to be dropped off last. But for some security guards it is their last duty of the day and they fall asleep.

Shubhangini recounted how the fear of violence looms large. In some parts of South Delhi, there are narrow lanes where the cab cant go. In such cases the cab driver is generally supposed to accompany the girl up to her residence. About five months back, my colleague was dropped off near her residence well past midnight at South-Ex and the cab driver refused to accompany her. She was chased by a bunch of goons. Luckily for her, some passersby in the locality came to her rescue.

In another instance, one of her colleagues travelling to Janakpuri from Gurgaon was alone in a cab with a security guard when a friend of the driver got into the cab and started making lewd gestures. This happened while I was working with another company two years back. There is a need to install a monitoring system that can track the movements of the cabs. That has not happened as yet, said Shubhangini.Also, there are times when people in charge of transport are not available at night. Shubhangini felt the need for a dedicated helpline meant for call centre workers working on night shifts and frequent monitoring by a third party of the security arrangements provided by call centres.

Gurmeet Kaur, a 35-year-old who has worked with a BPO in Gurgaon for three and a half years, was satisfied with the security arrangements provided by the company. However, she felt there should be more policemen out on the streets at night. I have been working in Gurgaon for the past seven years. Enhanced security presence at the toll plaza and the entrance from the Dwarka sector will ensure that criminals cannot escape easily after committing a crime. There are not enough policemen out on the streets at night.

The most glaring instances of everyday violence are perpetrated against women from the north-eastern region of the country. These institutionalised forms of violence often go unnoticed as they are closely linked to general perceptions of women from the north-eastern region as being loose, skimpily clad and therefore vulnerable to sexual abuse.

Rituparna Borah, a feminist activist from Assam who has been living in Delhi since 1999, explained, The perception of the girl from the north-eastern region as the bad girl has persisted for some years now. This perception is extended to assume that her sexuality can be violated. There is the derogatory chinki term used all the time. Several friends of mine faced attempts at molestation and sexual assault in the North campus while they were studying in Delhi University. We would have lewd letters passed under the doors of our rented accommodation.

A Delhi University student from Assam said there were many incidents of everyday abuse which were violative of the dignity of women. I remember, once I was waiting for an autorickshaw outside the university when a bunch of school kids walked towards me. Some of them tried to make conversation with me; when I ignored them they started abusing me, calling me a chinki. Once while I was returning to my flat in Jawaharnagar two men riding on a bike tried to misbehave with me. A bunch of neighbours got drunk and tried to barge into our flat another time.

A form of verbal violence prevails against students from the north-eastern region who get admission through reservation; also there is increased moral policing by landlords on girls from the region. The student recalled, I was studying in one of the premier institutions of Delhi, a girls college, where there was massive resentment against students who had got in through reservation. Also, landlords and even hostels place additional strictures on girls from the north-eastern region under the assumption that they are people who drink and dope all the time.

The incidents of violence against the north-eastern woman stem both from an assumption about their lose morals and a fascination with a fair-skinned exotic other, she said.

Violence towards the other also takes the shape of explicit and implicit forms of violence towards sexual minorities. Rituparna, who also works on issues relating to homosexuality, recalls an incident in 2008 when two of her friends living together in a flat in South Delhi were suddenly thrown out by the landlord after he got to know that they were a lesbian couple.

About two months back, a lesbian friend of mine who dresses up like a man was suddenly caught by the police while she was coming out of a womens toilet at the ISBT bus stop at Anand Vihar. They asked her what she was doing in a womens toilet and even demanded that she produce an identity card to prove that she was a woman. There are several such cases of harassment faced by transgender persons every day.

While instances of rape and molestation get reported, incidents of institutionalised violence against women as well as acts of verbal and emotional abuse happening every day in the National Capital Region do not make headlines.

Unsafe always By Vikhar Ahmed Sayeed in Bangalore

According to the statistics for 2011 compiled by the NCRB, among Indian megacities (cities with a population of more than 10 lakh), Bangalore has the highest number of crimes committed against women after Delhi. The figure for Delhi is 4,489, while that for Bangalore is a distant 1,890. What is worrying, though, is that Bangalore has moved up for the first time marginally ahead of Hyderabad, which for several years had the dubious distinction of having the second highest number of crimes committed against women.

The NCRBs annual Crime in India report has always stressed how Bangalore along with Chennai, Mumbai and Jaipur have booked more cases under Special and Local Laws compared with other megacities. Two of them are the Immoral Traffic (Prevention) Act, 1956, and the Dowry Prohibition Act, 1961. The high rate of cases booked might partly explain the statistics on crimes against women in Bangalore. The fact is that Bangalore is seeing more gender-related violence than many other cities in India. More than 70 per cent of all cases booked under the Dowry Prohibition Act from among 53 megacities of India were in Bangalore.

What is it that is making this city prone to gender-related violence both in the private and the public spheres?

Says Donna Fernandes of Vimochana, a womens rights organisation: Bangalore has become extremely violent against women, and women are not safe anywhere they are not safe on the road, in their own homes or in their mothers womb. This violence against women happens because men feel that they are more powerful than women. The violence really stems from this feeling of power.

In the past few years, there have been some horrific crimes against women in Bangalore that endorse her view. The most famous of these was the case of Pratibha Srikanthamurthy in 2005. Pratibha was a 22-year-old who was kidnapped, raped and murdered by the driver of the cab in which she was travelling to work for the night shift. The driver was sentenced to life imprisonment in 2010 after a trial that lasted five years.

This sordid case changed the norms for the security of female employees in the information technology (IT) sector. But women who work in the IT sector in the city are not safe even in the privacy of their homes as they are often victims of domestic violence.

Rani Shetty, a counsellor at Vanitha Sahayavani, a womens helpline for domestic violence, says that 20 per cent of all the cases that come in for counselling at her centre are from IT professionals. Saturdays are specially demarcated to deal with their cases, she adds. Vanitha Sahayavani handled 1,189 cases between April 2011 and March 2012.

The notion that domestic violence is more common among the economically backward classes needs to be done away with. There are frequent newspaper reports demonstrating the wide prevalence of domestic violence among all classes of society. Rani Shetty says that half of the people who come in for counselling in cases of domestic violence are educated people. According to Donna Fernandes, the nature of domestic violence has changed significantly with the city becoming wealthier: I know cases of several people who work in the IT industry. The crimes that the husbands commit against their wives inside their homes are very cruel as they cannot tolerate their wives doing better than they.

Street harassment

Street sexual harassment is also common in Bangalore. In early 2009, there was a spurt in attacks on women in Bangalore who wore western clothes. This came a month after the attacks on women in a pub in Mangalore in January 2009. It looked like a systematic attempt at cultural policing in Karnataka, but there was fierce resistance from civil society groups in Bangalore against this. One of these groups was Blank Noise, a nationwide volunteer-led community arts collective that seeks to address the issue of eve-teasing. According to Jasmeen Patheja of Blank Noise, the collective pushes the attitude that street harassment isnt a womans issue alone but concerns male behaviour and attitudes perpetuated by patriarchal ideology.

One of Blank Noises campaigns has been to ask female volunteers to send in a garment they wore when they experienced street harassment. It is clear from the range of garments that the organisation received that there is nothing like asking for it. Another campaign that the group is working on is to encourage the intervention of the general public. Says Jasmeen Patheja: The role of spectators is important, and we would like to push forward positive stories of a third person making a difference in street harassment.

Such campaigns become relevant when you look at data from a Womens Survey conducted by the Centre for the Study of Developing Societies (CSDS) in 2008. More than 60 per cent of the respondents in Karnataka responded positively to the question, Women often talk about feeling unsafe when they are outside the house. What about you, do you generally feel unsafe when you are outside your house? (While the small sample size of 197 from Karnataka does not allow us to make thorough inferences, it gives us a broad idea as to how women think.) The survey results show that women do not feel safe in Karnataka outside their houses.

Even the girl child is not safe. Aarti Mundkur, a lawyer working on gender issues in the city, points out how female foeticide is on the rise in Bangalore. Two cases of female infanticide and child sexual abuse in the city in the past few months stand out as morally depraved acts. First, the case of Afreen, a three-month-old baby who died after her father battered and bit her in an inebriated state as he did not want a girl child. In the second and equally sensational case, the Indian wife of a Frenchman working with the French Consulate in Bangalore accused him of raping their three-and-a-half-year-old daughter. Pascal Mazurier, the father, was arrested only after the national media drew attention to the dithering of the Bangalore Police. Both these cases have helped draw attention to the urgent need to protect the girl child from gender violence.

Activists feel that the polices response in cases of street sexual harassment and molestation and in domestic violence is not adequate. When a woman goes to the police station to register a case of molestation, her character is questioned and often the report is not filed, says Jasmeen Patheja.

Donna Fernandes is also dismayed by the attitude of the police and the legal system. The legal system needs to be overhauled as it is not sufficient to deter private and public crimes against women. We have forgotten that the law is there to actually prevent violence. Even after the violence that happens in cases of dowry harassment, there are so many procedural flaws in the police investigation that there is no point in having the law.

Women & honour By S. Dorairaj in Chennai

REPORTS of incidents of honour killing, kidnapping, sexual assault, cruelty by relatives and other atrocities against women and girls have triggered a serious debate in Tamil Nadu, a State ruled by the two major Dravidian parties alternately for more than four decades since 1967. Ironically, these parties claim to be rationalistic in outlook and swear by the emancipation of women.

Successive governments have stated that curbing crimes against women is an area of high priority for them, but official records indicate a steady rise in certain categories of crime. This has been a cause for concern not only for law-enforcing authorities but also for civil society.

The NCRBs Crime in India-2011 and also Crime Review, compiled by the State Crime Records Bureau (SCRB) for the corresponding period, point out that crimes against women in the State increased by 3.5 per cent compared with 2010. Of the 6,940 cases reported last year, the highest number, 1,812, fell under the category cruelty by husband and his relatives. As many as 1,743 cases came under kidnapping and abduction, and there were 1,467 cases of molestation. These three categories constituted 72.36 per cent of the crimes against women, according to Crime Review.

The report further said rape accounted for 9.75 per cent of the crimes. Of the 677 cases of rape registered during 2011, as many as 271 victims were children, 11 were Dalits, and three belonged to the Scheduled Tribes.

According to the NCRB report, Tamil Nadu occupied the top slot among the southern States in the kidnapping and abduction of women and girls. Minor girls constituted 29.16 per cent of the victims. Victims in the 19-30 age group accounted for 65.31 per cent.

There is no separate classification for honour killings in official records. However, the Policy Note on Police for 2012-2013, tabled in the Assembly during its recent Budget session, shows a marked jump in the number of murders owing to love affairs/sexual causes, from 155 in 2008 to 347 last year.

The State has a long history of honour killings, a harsh reality which castiest elements have always sought to cover up, said A. Kathir, executive director of Evidence, a Madurai-based non-governmental organisation (Demons and gods, Frontline, August 28, 2009).

In a memorandum to the Chief Secretary of Tamil Nadu on May 15, he highlighted the fact that caste Hindus had murdered six women and four men within a period of five years from September 2008 to May 2012 in the name of upholding the family pride.

The crime of honour killing has been perpetrated in Tamil Nadu mainly in the name of preserving caste purity. In some cases, caste Hindus murdered both Dalit boys and the caste Hindu girls they wanted to marry. Sometimes they killed the girls who brought disrepute to their families by deciding to marry Dalit boys. In certain other cases, the girls were forced to commit suicide to save their honour. These criminal acts should be brought under the category of honour crime, and exemplary punishment should be awarded to the offenders, Kathir said.

He also urged the State government to sensitise the police, besides bringing pressure to bear on the Centre to enact a comprehensive law to curb honour crimes.

The disturbing trend acquired a new dimension with leaders of certain caste organisations coming out openly against inter-caste marriages. At the recent annual congregation of a most backward community, a leader said that the hands of the youth from other communities who married girls from his community should be hacked. Subsequently, he described his remark as an emotional outburst on seeing the plight of young women of his community who were deserted by these boys after marriage.

Recently, another dominant community in the western region of the State launched a campaign among students and youth asking them to shun inter-caste marriages. Leaders of certain other caste groups also have appealed to the youth to preserve the purity, uniqueness and noble qualities of their own community by not favouring marriages outside their community. These appeals and warnings issued by caste organisations betrayed their anxiety to retain their vote bank, activists point out.

Even as the State government offered cash and other incentives to couples who married outside their castes with a view to abolishing the adverse effects of caste system and promoting social equality, casteist forces bared their fangs at them, said A. Mahaboob Batcha, managing trustee of the Society for Community Organisation Trust. He urged the government to take stern action, including de-recognition of the caste-based parties, if their leaders made casteist remarks and incited violence. He favoured steps to rally progressive youth to keep the forces of casteism at bay.

Inseparably intertwined with this problem is the prevalence of child marriage in some rural pockets. In certain cases, child marriage was used as a strategy to pre-empt inter-caste marriage, U. Nirmala Rani, advocate of the Madras High Court and an activist of the AIDWA, pointed out.

Apart from the health and psychological problems faced by child brides owing to their marriage at an inappropriate age, they had to suffer several other issues, such as the denial of proper education.

In this connection, she referred to a recent incident in which two minor girls who got married were not permitted to join class XI in a government school at Melur in Madurai district on the grounds that their presence would set a bad example for other students. The management had to rescind the decision at the intervention of the higher authorities in the Education Department and also the National Council of Educational Research and Training.

Dubbing it double jeopardy, Nirmala Rani said that the child bride had already been subjected to violence, and a denial of opportunity to continue her education would amount to secondary victimisation. The Melur incident was only the tip of the iceberg as many other cases went unreported, she said.

Describing The Child Marriage Restraint Act, 1929, as toothless, she said penalising the parents alone would not solve the issue. She argued that the practice could not be curbed without addressing the social and economic reasons for child marriage.