Southern States - Tamil Nadu-Chennai   

Panel for women seeks statutory authority

By Our Staff Reporter

CHENNAI MAY 28. After 10 years of fighting against a range of issues from dowry deaths to rape, the Tamil Nadu State Commission for Women today made a plea for statutory authority so that it could directly take action against offenders.

Speaking at a meeting to highlight issues handled by the commission, its chairperson, V. Vasanthi Devi, said the body was constituted by the Government in 1993 as an alternative forum "to deal with the abused, the battered, the denied, and sometimes, the dead." But without authority to act on petitions it received, justice and redressal were dependant on the often indifferent official mechanism.

"If we have a civil court-like authority, we can investigate into the complaints and take immediate action," she said pointing out that women's commissions in 18 other States had statutory powers.

A 1998 government order accepted in principle the need for statutory powers for the commission, and a draft bill had also been framed to grant the TNSCW legal authority, but a legislation was awaited, she said.

In her presentation, Dr. Vasanthi Devi said the commission received 110 complaints of atrocities against women in 2001 and 295 the next year. It had received 194 petitions till April this year, and was expecting another 500 by the year-end, she said wondering how the commission, with its limited powers, staff and funds, would cope with the increasing rush.

Most cases received by the commission were of dowry harassment, dowry deaths and other forms of domestic violence. There were also complaints of molestation, eve teasing, kidnapping, rape, social boycott, bigamy, child sex abuse, workplace harassment, and even property disputes, the chairperson said, but conceded that some might not be genuine. The commission had also received petitions against the police, alleging negligence in registration of cases, violence against women, and custodial deaths.

Citing examples, Dr. Vasanthi Devi said the commission had campaigned successfully to stop public buses from playing obscene songs, restored a 14-year-old girl to her mother, got a school teacher arrested for molesting a girl student, and fought for a voluntary retirement scheme and money due to 106 women workers of knitwork units. It even helped a girl wed an already married man who had cheated her with a promise of marriage, and such cases were always a dilemma for them, she said.

Mrs. Y.G. Parthasarathy, educationist and member of the commission, said persecution of women had increased in the past 10 years, but so had awareness of women's rights. She criticised cinema for influencing young men towards crime against women, especially in rural areas.

G. Thilakavathi, Additional Director-General of Police (Women Police), Chennai, and a member of the commission, said women were compounding their problems by isolating their cause. Forwarding the need for a convergence of several agencies to tackle atrocities against women, she said the all-women police stations could be taken advantage of. These stations were run on the lines of welfare organisations to make them accessible to the public, and volunteers were welcome to assist the force and complaints could be registered over phone.

Presenting a study on the plight of those lodged in the special prison for women in Vellore, Sudha Ramalingam, legal cell member of the commission, said a majority of them were either remand prisoners or kept under preventive custody, and not convicts yet.

As women from throughout the State were lodged in this centralised prison, about 70 per cent of them did not have visitors and many of their families were disintegrating, she said.

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