Women safe at home, men on notice

A law to protect women from abuse by husbands comes into effect today, reports Chetan Chauhan. Your take?

Updated on: Oct 26, 2006, 11:17:00 IST

None | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

Prefer HTon Google

Share via

Copy link

Finally there is a law to make home safe for women. The much debated law, aimed specifically at protecting women from being abused in any form by their husbands or male live-in partners, comes into effect from Thursday.

Under the Protection of Women from Domestic Violence Act 2005, offenders can be jailed for a maximum of one year or fined up to Rs 20,000, or both.

They can also be charged under other sections of the Indian Penal Code (IPC), if applicable.

Physical abuse	Beating, pushing, shoving
Sexual abuse	Forcing to have intercourse or look at pornography
Verbal abuse	Insulting
Economic abuse	Not providing for wife and children

The new law provides an all-encompassing definition of domestic violence including not only physical violence by the husband, such as beating or physically hurting his wife, or sexual violence like forced intercourse, but also verbal or emotional violence such as insulting the wife or preventing her from taking up a job, and even economic violence such as not allowing the wife to use her salary.

""The definition includes threats of abuse and dowry demands too," said Renuka Chowdhury, Minister for Women and Child Development.

Chowdhury said around 70 per cent of women in India were victims of domestic violence in some form. "The enactment of the law is a historic step towards ending gender discrimination," she said.

The law addresses sexual abuse of children, or forcing girls to marry against their wishes as well.

The Act also gives a married woman the right to remain in her husband's home, or under the same roof in a joint-family household, even if she does not have any rights to the property.

The Act empowers the court to pass protection orders to prevent an abusive husband from aiding or committing acts of domestic violence. The offender, for instance, can be restrained from communicating with the victim and from visiting her workplace or any other place she frequents.

Not everyone is happy with the Act. Pandurangi Reddy Bharati, who runs the Save Indian Family Foundation, said, "It will lead to the economic blackmail of men."

Chowdhury did not deny that the Act could be misused but said there would be "protection officers" to ensure it did not happen. "We will sensitise the officers on all aspects of the law," she said.

State governments will have to appoint a woman protection officer in each police station to book and pursue cases. Victims can seek compensation under the law.

Email Author:

chetan@hindustantimes.com

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Chetan Chauhan
Chetan Chauhan is the National Affairs Editor looking into all aspects of news and features from across India. A Chevening scholar with over three decades of experience in reporting and news management, Chetan has extensively covered all important aspects of the social sector, political economy, environment and climate change nationally and internationally. He did a journalism course at the Reuters Institute of Journalism in Oxford and Digital Media training at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. He started as a reporter with The Statesman in 1996 and joined the Hindustan Times in 2000 in the metro bureau covering environment, crime and Delhi politics. He covered hot local news, from the Jessica Lal murder case to the rebellion of Delhi Congress MLAs against then Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit, to the replacement of toxic vehicle fuel with cleaner compressed natural gas (CNG) in the national capital. Some of his stories on air pollution became part of the Supreme Court’s landmark MC Mehta versus Government of India case in the National Capital Region (NCR), forcing the government to take corrective measures. As part of the national political bureau since 2004, he covered important central sectors such as environment, education, social justice, labour, rural development, water resources, renewable energy, agriculture, broadcasting and the Planning Commission for more than a decade producing several exclusive and investigative breaking stories. His specialisation is the environment, having covered at least a dozen United Nations global conferences on climate change, biodiversity and wildlife including climate summits in Paris, Copenhagen and Bali. He also covered India’s two five-year plans ---11th and 12th and reported on drafting and execution of right based laws such as Right to Education, Right to Information and rural job guarantee law, MG-NREGA, now being introduced in new format as VG-RAM-G Act. He has in-depth knowledge of social sector issues. He was one of the first to report on tigers vanishing from Sariska and Panna wildlife reserves in 2004 and 2008, respectively, leading to the setting up of the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) and the introduction of stringent penal provisions for poaching. He has written extensively on the rising human-animal conflict in India and the degradation of India’s biodiversity hotspots because of mining and other activities. Since 2004, Chetan has covered Parliament comprehensively and participated in training on the nuanced coverage of Parliament proceedings. He has travelled extensively across India to cover national and provincial elections since 1998, especially in the Hindi heartland states, considered India’s road to power. He writes a regular column for Hindustan Times, Ecostani, on important national politics, economy, Himalayan ecology and environmental issues. His other responsibilities include providing inputs for edits and edit page articles for the publication, apart from managing news flow from across India.Read More

Follow India news real-time updates and the latest news covered on Hindustan Times, featuring today's critical updates on Sonam Wangchuk Hunger Strike LIVE and more across India.