Sunday, 13 Oct, 2024
By: Yash Gupte
This incident in the Chandigarh University has once again brought the crimes committed against women in to light. The rise in crime against women despite of number of legal provisions and safeguards shows that women are one of the most vulnerable sections of the society.
Huge protests erupted in the Chandigarh University after there were rumors of a woman recording her private videos along with the videos of her fellow hostel mates and sharing those videos with her boyfriend. However, Punjab police refuted the rumors and said that that the accused woman had shot and only sent her own video to her boyfriend and there were no other objectionable videos of other woman students shot or sent. Both, the accused woman and her boyfriend, Sunny Mehta, 23, working with a travel agency have been arrested by the police as the video had gone viral on the social media. Police have registered a case under section 354C of the Indian Penal Code (IPC) and other relevant sections.
This incident in the Chandigarh University has once again brought the crimes committed against women in to light. The rise in crime against women despite of number of legal provisions and safeguards shows that women are one of the most vulnerable sections of the society. The chart below depicts the statistics of crime against women in India.
Source: National Crime Records Bureau
The data shows that there is an increase in the crime against women as compared to the previous years. There has been a constant increase in crimes against women in India as in the year 2017, 3,59,849 number of crimes were registered against women and this number sharply increased to 4,05,861 in 2019. The crimes against women witnessed a fall in the year 2020 as the number of crimes stood at 3,71,503 as compared to the previous year’s 4,05,861.The reason for the dip was the covid-19 pandemic and the nationwide lockdowns imposed to curtail the spread of the virus and the pandemic. But, post pandemic, in 2021 the number of crimes against women was 4,28,278. This was the highest number of crimes against women reported till date. The crime against women in India increased by around 15.3% in 2021.
This data clearly shows that as soon as the life came to a normal post pandemic, the crime was not an exception. In India, in spite of constitutional and legal safeguards, the crimes against women are on a rise. Gender Disparity is one of the deep rooted causes of violence against women. Though government measures and legal measures are necessary for the protection of women, the society in general also needs to understand this and contribute in safeguarding women from crime.
