Mahila thanas a big relief, but there’s too few of them

SAHARANPUR/DEHRADUN: Kavita Singh, a software professional from Gurgaon, recently underwent an ear surgery after her husband hit her with a frying pan during a quarrel. She went back to her hometown Saharanpur with her parents and decided to file a police complaint of domestic violence. The idea was initially opposed by her parents who were wary about frequent visits from Saharanpur to Gurgaon where they assumed the case would be lodged since the incident took place there. But they relented when they came to know that Kavita can lodge an FIR at the nearest mahila thana or WPS (women police stations) which is mandated to register cases pertaining to crimes against women, irrespective of the location where the incident took place.

“It was a big relief to know that I don’t have to keep on going to Gurgaon but instead, my husband, being the accused, will have to come to Saharanpur for investigation,” said Kavita.




The ease of filing of cases is one of the reasons why WPS have gained traction in the country. Researchers Sofia Amaral and Sonia Bhalotra of University of Essex in the UK, and Nishith Prakash from University of Connecticut in the US, who recently conducted a joint study on all-female police stations in the country, told TOI in an email interaction that India’s mahila thanas are encouraging women to report crimes, as a result of which the country has witnessed almost a 22% rise in the filing of women-related cases since the time all-female police stations were set up in the early 2000s.






In the study, the researchers, who prominently focused on Rajasthan and Jharkhand but have included mahila thanas from across India, said that personnel posted at WPS “are more gender-sensitive than other cops”, leading to women feeling more amenable to approaching these police stations.

A check of the ground realities at mahila thanas in UP, Rajasthan, Jharkhand, Chhattisgarh and Uttarakhand by TOI teams found that reporting of crimes by women has indeed gone up. But also that a lot still needed to be done.

First, the good news. The number of women police personnel, which was approximately 5% of the police force in 2013, has risen to 7.56% (as of 2017). This means that there are more feet on the ground as far as women are concerned to look at female-oriented crime cases — which may have contributed to mahila thanas getting more response.


The flip side, though, is that the quality of policing in most WPS still has some way to go. Researcher Sofia Amaral said she found that while women police stations did a good job in getting women to report crime, they weren't so effective as far as policing was concerned -- arrests and chargesheets were problem areas. Nishith Prakash, co-author of the study, said that when he visited a few mahila thanas, he found that “access to resources was a binding constraint. “Starting from limited training to officers handling violence against women cases to ill-equipped stations, there is no doubt that women police stations in India need attention. One must keep in mind that policing quality is a very important factor when engaging with victims of sensitive forms of crime.”

Observers say that most mahila thanas, instead of functioning as police stations, quite often turn into “counselling centres.” This is acknowledged by personnel posted at these police stations. “The image of mahila thanas has become like a mediation centre. Women come here with their husbands and ask us to resolve their domestic quarrels,” said Madhuri Nayak, in-charge of the WPS at Jagdalpur in Chhattisgarh.

Sapna Kumari, who heads the mahila thana in Jaipur, concurred. “We register only family-related disputes in mahila thanas across Rajasthan. Sometimes, we take cases of rape but only after special orders of the concerned SP or SSP.”

If investigations by women cops are a problem, sub-inspector at Saharanpur, Suman Pawar, said it was quite obvious why. “Who said women police stations can handle everything? We need men’s support if we want to investigate the accused, who are mostly men. In case we want to go outstation for a probe, we still need men to accompany us,” she reasoned.

A police officer who did not wish to be named said that the reason why mahila thanas “lack teeth” is “poor guidelines from the government and acute staff crunch in the police department.”

Vidya Sagar Mishra, SP (rural), Saharanpur, said paucity of manpower was a major reason why mahila thanas were not able to function to their optimum capacity. “Every city has just one mahila thana and hence is unable to handle investigations of heinous crimes,” he said.

Considering that women-related crimes are on the rise — the study found that there has been a marked increase in acts of violence against females in the past few years — mahila thanas, too, would need to mould themselves accordingly to meet the challenge.