Pune: Vijaya Rahatkar of the Maharashtra State Commission for Women said she felt bad looking at the sheer number of crimes committed against women in the National Crime Records Bureau’s 2016 data.
“More than 3 lakh cases of violence and assault were registered against women, and the offenders in many of the cases were people known to the victims. I felt bad looking at the numbers. Everyone, the government, society, and police must take a stand to eliminate this menace from society,” she remarked.
Rahatkar was addressing an event at the launch of NO mobile application, a geo-assisted distress-calling mechanism developed by Charite Medical University in Berlin in collaboration with KEM Hospital and funded by German chemicals major Bayer.
The app’s developers said in the event of an attempt of sexual assault, the victim can alert police by pressing a button, integrated to a similar service of the Maharashtra Police, named Pratisaad. NO is unique in the sense that besides alerting the police, an alert also activates a fixed number of pre-selected contacts, the app’s call centre as well as app’s other users who are in geographical vicinity.
“The aim is to create deterrence in the mind of a potential offender about the dangers of sexual assault and the consequences of his/her actions. If such an instrument like the NO
app is present, which develops a large network of people standing up against sexual assault, it is a step in that direction,” said Klaus Beier, a professor of sexology and sexual medicine at Charite.
Others like former CRPF and Special Protection Group chief Durga Prasad Kode said that procedural law needs to be updated for swift punishment for sexual offenders.
“Procedural law is what needs changes in India to ensure certainty in penal action. Current CRPC law says that the defence can stretch cases through adjournments. That is not the case in other countries,” Kode said.
