How disability compounds violence against women

There is another, often sidelined, layer of violent crimes against women in India: that of women with disabilities. Disability and gender can become compounding factors that make women with disabilities extremely vulnerable to abuse and violence in India.

In the past couple of months, at least two instances of such crimes have drawn the attention of the mainstream media.

On August 21, a girl with speech and hearing disability died by suicide after she was allegedly gangraped in Ghaziabad. In Bihar, a 60-year-old man was arrested in July for allegedly raping an 18-year-old woman with a disability, based on CCTV footage of the incident. The woman, traumatised by the crime and aggravated by her disability, was unable to provide accurate information for the first information report.

Shaped by the identity of disability, such incidents are the tip of an institutionalised and structural pattern of violence that plays out in homes, state-run shelters, hospitals and courtrooms.

Missing data

The National Crime Records Bureau, in its report published in 2022, recorded 110 cases under Section 376(2)(l) of the Indian Penal Code which deals with punishment for the rape of “a woman suffering from mental or physical disability”. In the Bharatiya Nyay Sanhita, 2023, which replaced the penal code, punishment for rape is dealt with in section 64(2)(k).

However, under the Rights of Persons with Disabilities Act, 2016, the Bureau report does not provide any disaggregated data, such as sexual crimes against women with disabilities by gender or nature of disability. This means that any representative data on crimes against persons with disabilities and gender-based violence is invisible, leaving the bureau records as the sole representative information.

It is important to know the nature of disability because women with speech and mental disability are prone to such assaults. Statistically overlooked, their invisibility is just as much a consequence of systemic neglect, cultural silencing and legal indifference.

It has been well documented that one of the causes of such crimes against women and girls with disabilities is inadequate research about the risks and experiences of abuse, and the barriers they face in seeking and getting justice.

Structural violence

Violence against persons with disabilities is systemic: perpetuated by the very systems and caregivers meant to look after them. Social institutions – medical, legal, carceral and others – enable and even normalise violence.

In India, women with disabilities are often forced into care homes or psychiatric institutions where oversight is lax and abuse is rampant. A Human Rights Watch report in 2014 documented the sexual abuse of women with psychosocial or intellectual disabilities in institutions in Delhi, Pune, and Mumbai. Staff acted with impunity and survivors were unable to seek justice or even leave the institutions.

Similarly, in 2018, news broke of the Muzaffarpur shelter home in Bihar where women and girls with disabilities were subjected to months of sexual exploitation.

Cultural silencing

Violence against women with disabilities is exacerbated by dependence. Many require assistance for mobility, communication, or daily survival, making it harder to escape abusive caregivers.

The “bring me my wheelchair so I can leave you” dilemma, described by researchers Ravi Thiara and Gill Hague in their 2012 study, is literal and symbolic. Exit is not only socially restricted, but can also be physically impossible.

The architecture of India’s criminal justice system, public transport and even hospitals rarely accommodate wheelchairs, hearing aids or assistive communication. A woman with a disability must first prove she exists in a system that is not designed to acknowledge her.

When the state does respond, it is paternalistic, replacing autonomy with protection. For instance, in many state-run shelter homes for women with disabilities, high walls and locked gates are described as security measures. But these spaces become carceral rather than caring.

Intimate violence

It is well established that women are most unsafe in their homes: violence happens within families and marriages and at the hands of caregivers and supposed protectors. Data from the National Crime Records Bureau for 2020 showed that more than 95% of rapes were committed by a known person.

Disability compounds the barriers women can face. They cannot turn to domestic violence shelters for refuge since these do not have accessible toilets, ramps or sign language interpreters.

Approaching the criminal justice system is also difficult. A 2018 Human Rights Watch study found that more than 80% of women with disabilities in Odisha who experienced domestic violence were unable to report it. The police refused to file first information reports, or worse, advised survivors to “adjust” because of their dependency on the abuser.

Even when legal options are pursued, the barriers are immense. Courtrooms rarely make accommodations during testimonies: sign-language interpreters are unavailable and braille documents are non-existent. Public prosecutors, too, are unaware of the mandates of Section 12 of the Rights of Persons With Disabilities Act, which obliges authorities to ensure that procedures and information are accessible.

Moreover, the credibility of a survivor with a disability, especially psychosocial or intellectual disabilities, is often disbelieved.

What would justice look like?

First, visibility. The National Crime Records Bureau must collect and publish disaggregated data on crimes against persons with disabilities, especially women. Without statistics, there is no problem to solve.

Second, shelter and legal services must factor in disabilities, from physical accessibility to communication support. Third, institutions like care homes, or even police stations, must be held to account for violations under the Rights of Persons with Disabilities Act and the Protection of Women from Domestic Violence Act. In the context of disability, there is no recognition of domestic violence.

Finally, justice will mean shifting from a model of protection to one of autonomy. Women with disabilities must be heard, believed, and supported in making their choices.

Political philosopher Joan Tronto has noted the language of “care” can obscure violence. When care is non-consensual or given in a structure that strips the recipient of rights, it becomes another form of domination.

Until this violence is named, measured and its perpetuating structures dismantled, it will continue, not as an anomaly, but as policy by omission.

Shashank Pandey is a lawyer based in Lucknow and the Founder of the Politics and Disability Forum. He is also a former Research Fellow at Vidhi Centre for Legal Policy.