NCW member Rekha Sharma (centre) addresses the media at UT Police headquarters in Sector 9, Chandigarh, on Wednesday. Jaipal Singh
MEMBERS OF the National Commission for Women (NCW) gathered at Chandigarh police headquarters on Wednesday and discussed the concept of Mahila Jansunvai and how it has become a successful procedure to handle complaints. NCW member Rekha Sharma said the commission received around 33,000 complaints every year from all over the country. Majority of cases came from Bihar, West Bengal, UP and Haryana. “We have difficulty when police do not respond to our letters and reminders. Sometimes, they do work on our complaints but don’t inform us and sometimes, they just don’t take any action on the complaints,” claimed Sharma.
In this regard, NCW started the initiative to start a reach-out programme and named it Mahila Jansunvai (public hearing of women complaints) with the help of district police and district legal authority. The NCW members said this started from Ghaziabad in July last year and nearly 80 per cent cases piled up in two days. It was a big success. So, NCW took this up in its monthly calendar and now every member is going to two districts or even more in a month. NCW has conducted Mahila Jansunvai in UP, Bihar, Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh, Haryana, Delhi, Andhra Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Tamil Nadu, Karnataka, Jharkhand and in the process of conducting in other states.
In Chandigarh, NCW came up with 84 cases, most of which police had already worked upon except three or four for which Sharma issued directions to the concerned probe officers.
In one case, police had not done anything even after seven months. So, the DG assured that he would personally take care of it. In one case, the complainant lodged a complaint against the ex-DC, alleging that she was mentally harassed by the DC as she was maligned by him in the press. The former DC, who was present before the NCW team, denied the charges. First, he said he did not know the complainant and had hardly met her once or twice but later came out with many details about her. The commission will conduct an inquiry on the woman’s allegations before coming to a conclusion. The NCW team comprised Neha Mahajan Gupta, legal counsel, and Geeta Rathi, technical legal expert.
