E-Paper
Nearly 50% fall in domestic violence calls amid Covid-19 lockdown
Ghaziabad:
Ghaziabad:
The instances of domestic violence in the district during the first phase of lockdown have seen a sharp decline of about 50% as compared to the pre-lockdown period in March.
According to the data compiled by the Ghaziabad police for 18 police stations in urban and rural areas, cops received about 501 calls related to domestic violence from March 1 to March 22, while only 258 calls were made between March 23 and April 14 when the lockdown was put in place.
The data showed that only two police station areas of Niwari and Kaushambi received such calls, which landed at police emergency number 112, in single digit while eight police station areas stood in single digit during the lockdown period.
“The calls reduced drastically during the lockdown period. It could be due to regular movement of police in different areas and closure of liquor shops. It is generally seen that people consume liquor and resort to fight at home or indulge in domestic violence. The trend of decline in figures is encouraging and we expect that it should continue,” said Neeraj Kumar Jadaun, superintendent of police (rural) and nodal officer for police response vehicles (112).
The police station areas where major decline in calls was witnessed include Vijay Nagar (reduced from 63 to 30), Indirapuram (33 to 19), Kavi Nagar (44 to 12), Loni (46 to 30), Loni Border (41 to 26), and Sahibabad (47 to 22).
The police said that they will quantify more data for further analysis once the lockdown period ends.
Overall, the Ghaziabad police received 312 calls from the urban pockets and 189 from the rural areas during the pre-lockdown period. The number of calls from the urban centres dipped to 161, while in the rural areas it went down to 97 during the lockdown period.
Dr Saket Tiwari, consultant psychiatrist with National Mental Health Programme, who is also looking after counselling of patients at quarantine centres in Ghaziabad, said that currently people are more focussed on dealing with coronavirus.
“They are trying to fight the disease which is spreading. There are responses of humans where we conserve our energies to deal with the imminent danger. So, these energies are getting conserved to deal with coronavirus situation. There is also a fear of survival and people are also inclined to analyse the future,” Tiwari said.
“The lockdown has also given us a situation where people are at home and spending more time with family. So, the communication gap has also got reduced. Further, the stress levels which people bring home from their workplace has also reduced now. Generally, from the cases, we see that a male is inclined towards domestic violence. But now he is in protection mode and thinking more about his family,” he added.
