Another area of focus is suicides. Housewives accounted for 52 per cent of the total female suicide cases. Married women account for 66.6 per cent. The complex way in which bad marriages drive women to suicide is still to be fully understood. Further, 46.8 per cent of the victims had less than middle school education. Women preferred to drown, hang or immolate themselves. Significantly, majority of the women are between 15 and 29 years of age while male victims are between 30 and 44. Social and economic causes led most men to commit suicide while emotional and personal factors were the prime reasons with women. All this casts heavy responsibility on women police already saddled with important tasks and issues relating to search, arrest, custody of women witnesses, arrestees and juvenile delinquents. But there is just one policewoman for every 45 policemen, a woefully inadequate 2.09 per cent of the entire police force. As many as 18 States have a strength of less than 1,000 each. Maharashtra is in the lead with 4,345 policewomen. The share of women in armed police is 0.39 per cent. They exist only in a few states — Madhya Pradesh, Himachal Pradesh, Jammu and Kashmir, Assam, Goa and Delhi. There are not enough policewomen for investigation. In such a situation, there is no question of policewomen being available to tackle cases where the woman is the victim rather than the offender. It is time to put on the thinking caps.
Posted on: Sat, 20 Jul 2013 09:36:38 +0000
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