Ten years after it was implemented, how is the Domestic Violence Act faring?

It was two months into their marriage when the abuse began. Mohan, 30, slapped his wife Ragini, 27, for giving a lower dowry than expected by her parents-in-law (names changed to maintain anonymity.) “First he used to be sarcastic about our class difference – I was from west Delhi and he from a posh south Delhi society – but then one day, he attacked at me”, said Ragini, an energetic woman, who now teaches at a school in New Delhi. “I tried to attack him back at times, but all that I could do was scratch him.”

When Ragini told her mother-in-law about the abuse she was told that “all this is normal”. It was when Ragini’s husband dragged her and beat her up so severely that it left her with wounds on her head that she left the house and registered a complaint with the Delhi police under the Protection of Women from Domestic Violence Act, passed in 2005.

“I was in a dilemma then, because filing a case meant that my marriage is going to break and we are going to have a divorce,” she said. But her family’s support firmed her resolve for justice. The court has provided partial compensation to Ragini, while divorce proceedings are still ongoing.

In the 10 years since the Protection of Women from Domestic Violence Act, a civil act, was passed, more than 1,000,000 cases have been filed across the country under sections pertaining to “cruelty by husband” and dowry, data from the National Crime Records Bureau shows. Cases registered under the abetment of suicide of women, collected by the Bureau since 2014, increased by 34%, from 3,034 the previous year to 4,060 in 2015, the data shows.

For a decade from 2005 to 2015, 88,467 women, or an average of 22, died each day in dowry-related cases. In 2015 alone, 7,634 women were killed over dowry, data shows.

Missing, incomplete data under the prevention of domestic violence act

Though the domestic violence legislation was enacted in 2005, the National Crime Records Bureau only started collecting data under the law in 2014, according to this 2017 Lok Sabha answer.

Today, data under Protection of Women from Domestic Violence Act, as collected by the National Crime Records Bureau, includes only criminal violations of court orders under the legislation, such as the violation of a protection order passed by the court while the case is ongoing. Cases registered under the violation of the Protection of Women from Domestic Violence Act increased by 8%, from 426 in 2014 to 461 in 2015, according to data.

This does not include actual incidents of domestic violence that are recorded under three sections of the Indian Penal Code – section 498 A for cruelty by husband and his relatives, section 304 B for Dowry deaths and section 306 for abetment of suicide.

Further, cases dealing with protection from husband and relatives, and maintenance in cases of domestic violence, are registered directly with the court, under the Protection of Women from Domestic Violence Act and are not recorded by the National Crime Records Bureau. This data on court cases has remained inaccessible after repeated attempts by women’s rights groups.

More than a decade since the act has been implemented, data on its success or failure of is skewed, said Swati Maliwal Jaihind, the chairperson of the Delhi Commission for Women. “What I have observed all these years is that the fight to justice is a tedious one with often justice delayed is justice denied,” she said, explaining that courts don’t collect numbers on outcome of these cases.

Even in cases recorded by the Bureau , there is high pendency.

As many as 35,260 (83%) out of 42,410 cases filed under dowry deaths in 2015 and left over from 2014 were pending at the end of 2015, as were 11,319 (99.9%) of 11,320 cases recorded under abetment of suicide, 44,4367 (83%) of 534,431 cases filed under cruelty by husbands and his relatives, and 846 (99.8%) of 847 cases filed under the Protection of Women from Domestic Violence Act, according to data from the National Crime Records Bureau.

Numbers may not reflect reality

In 2015, more than 113,000 cases were filed under the section called “cruelty by husband and relatives” by the National Crime Records Bureau, up 80% from 2006, when about 63,000 cases were filed, data shows. The increase in number of cases could be because of an actual increase in crime or because of a rise in reporting of such cases, as awareness of the law grows, and more women are empowered to report abuse to the police, rather than an increase in the number of crimes.

Trends differ from state to state. For instance, in Andhra Pradesh, cases under “cruelty by husbands and relatives” decreased from 9,164 to 6,121, a 33% fall between 2006 and 2015, while dowry deaths decreased 66% from 519 in 2006 to 174 in 2015. Cases under “cruelty by husbands and relatives” increased by over 171% in West Bengal from 7414 in 2006 to 20,163 in 2015. There was little change in the number of dowry deaths recorded in Bihar from 1,188 in 2006 to 1,154 in 2015.

It is unclear whether data from the National Crime Records Bureau shows actual trends in domestic violence. Almost 30% of married Indian women between the ages of 15 and 49 years reported experiencing spousal violence at least once, according to the National Family Health Survey-4, conducted over 2015-2016. This proportion has reduced from 27.2% of women who reported violence by spouses in 2005-2006.

Though cases recorded with the National Crime Records Bureau reduced in Andhra Pradesh, a higher proportion of women (43.2%) reported facing spousal violence in 2015-2016 over 2006-2006 (33%), according to National Family Health Survey data.

As many as 60% of men admitted to violence against their wife or partner at some point in their lives, according to a study by Washington-headquartered International Centre for Research on Women and United Nations Population Fund, as IndiaSpend reported in November 2014.

Other signs of the continuing domestic abuse against women is reflected through other indicators. For instance, more Indian women are prone to fire-related deaths than any other country – 18 times more than Pakistani women and 38 times more than Chinese women – according to an analysis of global disease data by the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation, a research body based at the University of Washington in the US, as IndiaSpend reported in January 2017.

As many as 17,700 Indians died due to fire accidents in 2015, of which 10,925 (62%) were women, National Crime Records Bureaudata revealed.

Further, though Indian men are twice as likely as women to kill themselves, of all the methods of suicide, self-immolation is the only one that claims more women than men, according to national crime data, with 5,832 women committing suicide by fire, compared to 3,723 men in 2015.

Ritual self-immolation is an Indian tradition, noted this 2003 study, which identified dowry as the modern motivating factor. “When dowry expectations are not met, the young bride may be killed or compelled to commit suicide, most frequently by burning,” wrote the author, Virendra Kumar, a forensic professor.

Why domestic violence is common and justice slow

After a case has been filed, many different kinds of organisations play a role in ensuring justice and rehabilitation to the victim.

“It is important to understand that there are multiple stakeholders involved in the implementation of the law ranging from protection officers – who issue protection orders as a relief to the victim, an order of monetary relief, a custody order, residence order and compensation order, service providers – who aid in conducting medical examination, record the incident of violence, and forward it to the magistrate while also providing the aggrieved with a shelter home, and a lawyer”, said Anuradha Kapoor, Director of SWAYAM, a non-governmental women’s rights organisation in Kolkata.

There are problems at each level of implementation.

Protection officers are often overloaded with work and are not provided with guidelines in implementing certain provisions in the law,” said Suneeta Thakur, counselor with Jagori, a women’s resource centre headquarted in Jagori.

Moreover, “there is hardly any change over time in the notion that domestic violence is a family affair,” with at least 57% of the protection officers surveyed regarding it as a family affair, according to a 2012 report studying the implementation of protection under the domestic violence act in Delhi, Rajasthan and Maharashtra by the Lawyers Collective, a New Delhi public interest law firm.

Ragini Sharma’s experience with the police seems to bear this out. “The system is not very clean when it comes to filing a domestic violence complaint,” she said. “Many times the police urged us to sort out the matter amongst ourselves as this was not simply a matter of violence but dowry demand as well.”

Thakur of Jagori said that patriarchal attitudes remains very much a part of our family structures and the State is reluctant to change this.

Another flaw in the implementation of the law is that there is no uniform protocol for service providers. Service providers in this case are mostly NGOs, and often have no link with the police or with protection officers, according to the Lawyers Collective report. Service home authorities are not trained under the Protection of Women from Domestic Violence Act or taught to handle cases of domestic violence, the report said.

Further, these organisations lack adequate funding, the report said.

“When an aggrieved woman reaches us, after counselling her, we direct her to a shelter home” but “shelter homes remain flooded with women,” said Thakur. Often, a woman can stay at a shelter home for a maximum of two months, after which she has to either find another shelter home or remain homeless, explained Maliwal of Delhi Commission for Women. “I strongly believe that there should be some vocational training courses for women in these homes so that they can earn a livelihood for themselves”, adds Maliwal.

The judiciary also plays an important role in implementing the law. “Over time, in our trainings, we have often come across unaware lawyers and judges, “said Kapoor of Swayam, whose organisation runs awareness trainings on the Act for lawyers. “Most of the times they don’t know how (the) law works and how to utilise the law as an effective instrument to reduce abuse.”

Most lawyers are not aware of the concept of service providers and therefore do not coordinate with them in providing adequate legal services, according to the Lawyers Collective report. Furthermore, the judiciary is hardly aware of the role of the service providers, for either filling in the Domestic Incident Report, or for counselling, the report said.

Further, speedy trials – the Protection of Women against Domestic Violence Act mandates that the magistrate shall endeavour to dispose of every application filed, within a period of sixty from first day of its hearing – are not a reality.

Ragini Sharma, who filed her case against her husband and his parents for domestic violence about a year ago, had only received partial compensation after nine months, while the rest will be given once the divorce proceedings are finalised, she told IndiaSpend.

“None of the Courts have been able to achieve the Protection of Women from Domestic Violence Act provision of a timeline of 60 days for passing of orders and this creates delays in justice”, according to the Lawyers Collective report.

“We are making definite efforts to decrease this file over file load. There is already a pendency of cases from previous governments, if it continues to linger, they will be an indeterminate delay in the whole process”, said Maliwal of Delhi Commission for Women.

Domestic violence still seen as an internal family affair

Domestic violence is often treated as a family affair requiring counselling both by the police and the courts, according to the 2014 Quest for justice report by the Tata school of Social sciences. This has become the approach of both agencies that discourage women from proceeding with legal remedies and instead recommend they “settle” matters”, the report explained.

In Tamil Nadu, All Women Police Stations did not register crimes in cases of domestic violence immediately. Instead they registered the cases in the Community Service Register and attempted to resolve the dispute through informal mechanisms, the report said.

This article first appeared on IndiaSpend, a data-driven and public-interest journalism non-profit.