The wave of the massive Nirbhaya protests prompted the government to set up 36 One Stop Centres (OSCs), one for every state and UT, on a pilot basis in 2015. Today, there are 819 operational OSCs across the country. A One Stop Centre is meant to integrate victim-survivor’s access to different mechanisms of justice such as police, hospitals and courts, while also providing emergency shelter and psycho-social counselling.
Imagine you were out for wedding shopping and three days later, you die in police custody because they thought you were a thief. Or that you were arrested on suspicion of murder, simply because you were within a 5 KM radius from the crime scene.
Prisons are taken for granted within ‘civilised’ societies; we often do not think of the what and why of the institution. Often, we find ourselves at one of three points on a continuum: being oblivious and uninterested, feeling secure in knowing that there is a prison, or being concerned about the people who reach prison.
When people talk about striking a deal, what I remember are the innumerable deaths of women. This is because when a woman is alive, society brokers a deal over her dowry and when she is dead, the deal is over her body.
The easiest thing to tell a woman in a violent marriage is to just leave. But is leaving always that simple? From financial vulnerabilities to a loss of kinships, to a turbulent clash of hope and fear, to a complex interplay of love and desire, the decision to not leave and stay in a violent marriage is not simple.
