NewIndpress
Bangalore, Nov 29: If one techie's sorry tale of being beaten up by his wife made you think that women are misusing laws (a little too flabbergasting considering the fact that the `victim' just needed to take a peek into the history and draw inspiration to bash up his wife in retaliation!), digest this: on an average, 70 women are set afire each month in Bangalore district.
“These are the statistics emanating from Victoria Hospital alone and do not include the cases admitted by St John's Hospital. That apart, many upper class people go to private hospitals where such cases are easily hushed up with the help of corrupt police who push them into ‘unnatural deaths’ ledgers,” says Donna Fernandes of Vimochana, the NGO that spearheaded the campaign to get the law against dowry - Section 498 A - enacted.
What's more, although most of the victims die, less than 10 percent of the cases (only 5-6 cases) get registered in a month.
Dowry tops the list of the crimes, followed by suspicion of wife's fidelity, demand for male child, etc.
These figures do not include cases of hanging, poisoning and suicides.
These are not cooked-up statistics nor those churned out of tinpot surveys or haphazard SMS polls.
These are the stories of poorest of poor women, some pregnant, whose lives were wrenchingly cut short by criminal husbands (some alcoholic) and in-laws; these are the women who were buried and conveniently forgotten by a city that thinks no end of itself.
Vimochana has posted three women counsellors at Victoria Hospital burns ward who note down each burn case admitted.
Sathya and her colleagues have been witness to hundreds of deaths.
Sathya rues: “Since January 2006, I have myself witnessed nearly 750 admissions. Of which, less than 20 percent survived and still lesser percent of cases are discharged on medical advice. It's a pathetic situation. Most cases are not registered because the police do not conduct spot inspections. They even say they cannot do much when the victims themselves term it a ‘stove burst’, an ‘accident’, etc.”
Citing cynicism and corruption, Sathya says that even when the victim's hair smells of kerosene, police refuse to take up the case.
Some doctors even convince the victim's relatives and get her admitted to private hospitals.
These cases do not figure in police registers either.
“The situation is very disturbing. Any woman who sustains 20-30 percent of burns has a chance of surviving. But because of the pathetic conditions in the hospital, they develop infections and die. And those who sustain more than 50 percent of burns have a lesser chance of survival,” adds Donna.
Profoundly shattering as these findings are, they also point at the silence hovering over the graves of these women buried along with the hushed-up crimes.
Juxtapose this with the noise being made over male software employees being harassed by their wives; what emerges clearly is this appalling fact: that it is anything but unnatural for women to be burnt alive; in other words, anything is questionable but the status quo.