Sundus, a student of Chartered Accountant with educated family background fell prey to the domestic violence on the hands of in-laws in Pakistan’s Cosmo Politian city Karachi.
She was neither first female of domestic violence nor victim of brutal torture in her house at the hands of in-laws; infact there are many women who had been beaten, tortured, raped, incest, victimised and killed as well.
Every third house hold experiences the violence against women in Pakistan, according to report released by women rights organization.
While other report suggests that atleast five women were being killed in Pakistan on daily basis and most of the domestic violence incidents go unreported or settled as considered “personal issues” due to patriarchal mindset.
According to reports Sundus was being beaten and tortured by in-laws including her husband but she was unable to find any potential support to combat the violence.
She found woman police officer that was known to her and shared her ordeal but she was not ready to go direct at police station or any other shelter or help desk as she was not aware of those support mechanisms or afraid that she might be get divorce or male officials should not understand her ordeal.
While in attempt to save her house (avoiding divorce) she lost her life at the end. One day she was found hanged in her house and in-laws declared it the case of suicide with strong narrative that she was not “normal”.
Woman police officer was aware of the violence and she forced administration for the post mortem of deceased as in-laws and the family of Sundus was not interested in legal procedure.
Finally post mortem report revealed that she was choked and her bone of lower head was fractured badly and after that police registered case against her husband and he is behind the bars but case yet to be decided.
When this kind of situation can happen in urban city and educated female then one even cannot imagine what have been facing the women in rural or remote areas of the country.
Woman police officer (who is not authorised to talk with media) told the reasons behind it as: Women were not aware of the friendly laws and secondly the existing support mechanisms are not known to them.
There were limited women officials/personnel in police force which is the first respondent to the survivors or victims of the any kind of violence. Police officer argued that if a woman challenges violence then she will have to go to police station and if luckily she got case registered then there were courts to provide her justice but again courts have limited number of women. There is no enabling environment in courts during case hearings; therefore even men avoid going to the courts.
When survivor cannot find women at police stations and judiciary, ultimately it creates difficult environment for women and how those survivors would trust those institutions which were dominated by males mostly. One should understand that domestic violence survivors most of the time face torture at the hands of men, so how can she trust another man due ongoing violence.
Raheema Panhwar, regional coordinator of Strengthening Participatory Organizations, said we are implementing a project titled “Policy Advocacy and Research on Strengthening Implementation of CGBV Response Services in Sindh”, supported by Caritas Austria and Australian Government to strengthen the implementation of pro women legislation and Gender Based Violence Response Services in Sindh in four districts namely Karachi, Hyderabad, Matiari and Jamshoro.
She told the goal of the project is to ensure that women are protected and are able to access services developed under the recently promulgated pro-women laws.
“We are closely engaged with six key departments including Women Development, Social Welfare, Human Rights, Home Department, Health and Planning &Development Department for implementation of four key pro women laws implementation i.e. The Sindh Commission on the Status of Women Act, 2015, The Sindh Child Marriages Restraint Act, 2013, The Domestic Violence (prevention and protection) Act, 2013 and Anti-Women Practices Act 2011 for improved GBV response services in Sindh” she further added.
Ms Panhwar told “SPO has established a “Provincial Steering Forum” with representation of various civil society activists for coordination and networking support from various government line departments.
Moreover a Police Officer told that there were 1973 females out of 132246 police force in Sindh as off February, 2019. It includes over 31 Assistant Sub Inspectors, Sub Inspectors and Deputy Superintendent of Police with only four Senior Superintendent of Police officers.
Thought the police high ups increased women quota from tow percent but they were unable to meet the increased 5% quota. She said due to lack of facilities and incentives and, enabling environment women were reluctant to join the police force. “It may be the perception or reality sometimes but it happens in our society” adding further.
As per 5% quota for women in Sindh police it will be translated as below:
80 Inspectors
187 sub-inspectors
347 assistant sub-inspectors
579 head constables
4131 constables
19 deputy superintendents of police
It means there should be 5343 women in police but at this stage there are only 1973 women in the force.
Though police officials have established help desks at Range and district level with some desks set up at police station level as well but the number of women police station is not sufficient yet.
In this regard former Deputy Inspector General (DIG) Larkana range Abdullah Shaikh in 2018 had accounted that 31 help desks were established in the whole police range but civil society representatives claim that there were no women on ground at those help desks.
Former DIG Abdul Khaliq Shaikh (serving in IB) Karachi was the first who had appointed Ghazala Shah as first Station House officer in Karachi; while SSP East Karachi Captain (R) Azfar Mahersar recently while addressing a seminar told that when he had appointed woman SHO in Khairpur Mirs district of Sindh province, many people were surprised and opposed such posting but he did not transfer woman till he was transferred from there.
The then Inspector General of Police Sindh A. D. Khawaja and present Provincial police chief Syed Kaleem Imam expressed their intentions to bring more women in police and announced facilities for them on different occasions.
Deputy Inspector General Police South Karachi Sharjil Kharal while told in a consultative dialogue that there was willingness to bring women police in mainstream with key posts as to create enabling environment for them.
He said we have signed MoU with Jamshoro hospital for forensic and we have been working to gear up Lab at Karachi university and then we don’t need to send evidences to Lahore after it started working here at Karachi. Mr Sharjil told that police department have launched toll free help line and the data on GBV has been consolidated onwards.
Ex-SSP Liyari Shahla Qureshi has many suggestions to improve women conditions in the police and to attract women to the police force. She said department should take extra ordinary measures like increasing the number of women in force and increased incentives as well.
Ms Qureshi suggested that women should be given key responsibilities in the force with full authority because only show casing women would not work in the department as neither it will support serving personnel nor would attract new comers.
What should be done?
The budget for women police personnel should be increased. More facilities and incentives like pick and drop, food (while duty timing) facility and allowances for remote posting or duties.
Key posting should be given to women and be involved in important operations.
Mass media campaign to attract women to join police force with announcements of incentives.
Women police station should be established at each district in Sindh.
While adding her suggestions Ms Panhwar said that there is dire need to establish women help desk at every police station to facilitate GBV survivors, establishment of Women Protection Cells across province.
She demanded to increase budgetary allocations to create enabling environment for women police staff with hiring of women police officer as an affirmative action and boost up the process of establishment of forensic lab in Karachi.
The presence of women police at each police station should be made practically. The budget allocated for women personnel should not be utilised at any other head.
The trainings of women police should be held on regular basis by the department.
Police department should appoint SP Gender Crimes at each district only to combat gender based violence.
Gender based violence cases should be linked directly to SP Gender Crimes and provincial police chief office.
There should be “Gender Based Support Vehicle” (GBSV) ideally at each police station starting from district level initially.
By adopting these suggestions and with the increased number of women in police force and judiciary we can save many Sundus, who fell prey to various types of violence.
