From: udcrusd@meaddata.com (Sylvia D'Cruz)
Subject: Some Stats on crimes on the women of India
Organization: Mead Data Central, Dayton OH
Date: Thu, 8 Oct 1992 19:58:47 GMT
Distribution: soc.culture.indian

How many of you feel that India is a great place to live in for the handicap ?
Do you see a smile on any of the handicapped in India ? Do they get the respect
and help they need, to make their life better or do they get our pity ?


Sylvia.

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                              The Associated Press

The materials in the AP file were compiled by The Associated Press. These
materials may not be republished without the express written consent of The
Associated Press.

                       February 7, 1992, Friday, PM cycle

By VIJAY JOSHI, Associated Press Writer


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    On a hot summer night, a penniless couple took their lame 6-year-old
daughter to a lonely spot on the edge of the Yamuna River and pushed her to her
death in the muddy water.

   "They said they were too poor to save for her dowry, and a lame girl would
have meant more dowry money," said Kanwaljit Deol, a senior policewoman.

   The murder, in 1989 in New Delhi, is repeated thousands of times a year in
towns, villages and remote tribal areas of  India.

   Girls are undernourished and often married soon after attaining puberty at
age 13 or 14. Many wives who do not bear male  children  or bring sufficient
dowry are burned to death by in-laws or driven to suicide.

   Newspapers routinely report "dowry deaths," or "cooking accidents" in which
the woman is doused with kerosene and set afire because the dowry paid by her
parents did not include a television, motor scooter or enough jewelry.

   Most Indians are inured to such killings because the male-dominated society,
fed on scriptures of the dominant Hindu religion, presents the image of woman as
weak and inferior, born to serve man.

   Mrs. Deol, a deputy police commissioner, was not the investigating officer in
the death of 6-year-old Rekha, but she took a keen interest in it because "I am
a woman first. Then, I have certain powers to get things done. It is definitely
as a woman I reacted."

    India  treats women "as a burden at best and a piece of furniture at worst,"
she said.

   Rekha's father, Radhe Shyam, and mother, Laxmi Devi, were convicted of murder
and sentenced last year to life in prison, which Indian law interprets as 14
years.

   In the western state of Rajasthan and a tribal area in southern Tamil Nadu
state, mothers or midwives kill unwanted female infants minutes after they are
born.

   "From feticide to infanticide, from early marriage and too many pregnancies
to rape and dowry deaths - the female population of this country lives by
sufferance," said Shailaja Bajpai, a writer on social issues.

   According to government figures, 2,448 dowry deaths, 5,916 rapes and 7,116
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kidnappings of women were recorded in  India  last year. About 12,000 other
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cases of molestations were reported, including wife-beating and sexual
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harassment at work or in public places.
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   "Behind every discovered case, there are hundreds, probably thousands, of
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undiscovered ones," Mrs. Deol said.
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   No official records are kept of female infanticide or abortion of female
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fetuses.
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   Some of the most brutal ways of killing a girl baby are seen in the Jaisalmer
district of Rajasthan.

   They include strangling, placing a heavy bag of sand or salt on the infant's
face, putting a cot leg on the throat and pressing, and stuffing opium into the
mouth. Some babies are left in the open to die.

   Police usually can do nothing because everyone in the village swears the
death was natural, Mrs. Deol said.

   Few girls can be found in the Rajasthan villages of Kundha, Rundah, Mudha and
Junajanali, whose residents are Bhatti Rajputs, a high-caste warrior clan.

   Bhatti men marry women of other villages, but a Bhatti woman is not allowed
to marry a lower-caste man or another Bhatti. That limits the choice of grooms,
and most parents prefer killing daughters to supporting them for the rest of
their lives.

   In Tamil Nadu, almost 80 percent of girls born in a small caste of poor
laborers are killed, usually with poisonous berries. Another method is putting a
grain of uncooked rice into the newborn's mouth.

   "If it doesn't suffocate the child, the sharp point of the grain rips the
tender intestine," Mrs. Deol. said.

   She was the first chief of a New Delhi police squad established in 1983 to
fight  crimes  against women. Similar teams were set up in six other states.

   "There is a lot of hidden  crime  against women in our country, which is
coming out in the open" because of the special police squads, said Yamin
Hazarika, current head of the New Delhi team.

   Many women had been too embarrassed to complain to male policemen. The
special squads are staffed largely by policewomen and accept the help of social
activists.

   Since the advent of amniocentesis and sonargrams, which can determine the sex
of a fetus, many unwanted girls are aborted.

   In the western state of Gujarat, 9,000 of the 20,000 fetuses tested between
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1980 and 1988 were aborted, according to a survey by women's organizations. By
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the law of averages, it said, about 10,000 of the tested fetuses must have been
male.

   Feticide and infanticide have given  India  a disproportionate sex ratio. It
declined from 934 females to 1,000 males in 1981 to 929 to 1,000 in 1991,
according to the latest national census.

   "Once a woman is married, her only salvation lies in producing the great male
hope," said Ms. Bajpai, the writer. "And the cycle continues."

-- 
Sylvia D. D'Cruz                                


Xref: sparky soc.culture.indian:33711 soc.culture.tamil:2769