| Charges of domestic violence made by the estranged wife of billionaire tycoon Gautam Singhania point to a public health crisis where one in three women is subject to domestic violence. The usual trigger warnings apply. Read on…. The Big Story In plain sight: The ugly truth about domestic violence  Gautam Singhania (Source: Hindustan Times) Nothing in this makes for pleasant reading. “He beat up, smashed up, kicked, and punched us unrelentingly,” says the estranged wife of a billionaire tycoon. He is Gautam Singhania, the chairman and managing director of textiles-to-real estate conglomerate Raymond. The person making these serious allegations is Nawaz Modi Singhania, his wife for 32 years. The attack on her and her minor daughter, she says, took place early in the morning of September 10, following Gautam’s birthday when an altercation over the use of a toilet blew out of hand and ended in a full-scale assault by him. The mother and daughter locked themselves up in a room and called for help. She says that her husband taunted her that the police would not arrive. “Everyone is in my pocket,” he said, according to Nawaz. But the intervention of high profile friends ensured that the police did arrive. A non-cognisable report was written. And Nawaz Singhania ended up at Reliance Hospital, where she was admitted for treatment for her injuries, including broken bones. Gautam Singhania has refused to comment on his wife’s allegations, saying only: “In the interest of my two beautiful daughters, I would like to maintain my family’s dignity, and I will refrain from offering any comment. Please respect my privacy.” Depressing data With one in three women globally subjected to it, domestic violence is emphatically not a private matter between two individuals but a public health crisis. The data is dire. The National Family Health Survey (NFHS) for 2019-21 finds 29.3% of married Indian women between the ages of 18 and 49 have been subjected to domestic violence; this includes 3.1% of pregnant women. Even before the Covid pandemic set in—being locked in at home led to an exponential increase in domestic violence cases—the percentage of married women who reported facing violence from a spouse was as high as 44.4% in Karnataka. In Bihar, 40% of women reported being victims of spousal violence, according to NFHS. Delhi Commission for Women head Swati Maliwal said the commission received 6.3 lakh distress calls between July 2022 and July 2023 on its helpline 181. But if the numbers are chilling, then the data on attitudes to domestic violence are perhaps even more so. A 2018 survey of 600,000 households across India found over half of all women justify domestic violence for a variety of reasons like disrespecting in-laws, arguing with a spouse, not cooking properly, or neglecting the household. The numbers were particularly high in the southern states—in Telangana, 84% of women, in Andhra Pradesh 82.2% justified violence by a husband. All pervasive misogyny  (Source: Feminism in India) A recent study of over 400,000 FIRs (first information reports) filed between 2015 and 2018 in Haryana of cases ranging from theft to violence against women found that women were disadvantaged and discriminated against at every step of the legal process. Women’s complaints, found the study by Nirvikar Jassal, an assistant professor of political science at the London School of Economics, were far less likely to go from the police station to the judiciary. Even when they did, these were far less likely to result in convictions: 5% for cases filed by women; 17.9% for those filed by men. Among the many excuses police give women while refusing to file FIRs are: Go for counselling instead, save your marriage, the case will take very long and you won’t get anything. In fact, the overwhelming desire to save the “sanctity of marriage” infects the senior judiciary as well, with judges passing sweeping comments about “disgruntled housewives” and how women seeking their rightful and legally-mandated maintenance are looking for a “windfall”. [I wrote about misogyny in the judiciary here.] The public narrative around domestic violence continues to encourage silence and maintain “dignity for the sake of the family”. It is “sanctity of the family” that is also one of the chief resistances to criminalising marital rape. In India it is perfectly legal to rape your wife, provided she is over 18, the legally mandated age to marry. In 2014, actress Preity Zinta filed a case against former boyfriend Ness Wadia for abusing and molesting her in public during a cricket match. There was little, if any, public sympathy for her. Columnist Tavleen Singh said the complaint amounted to “misusing the law”. [Read: Deepanjana Pal on how Preity Zinta broke the good girl rule.] It took the police four years to file a charge-sheet against Wadia. The case was finally quashed on the advice of the Bombay high court. [Read: Why court-issued protection orders to domestic violence survivors offer no protection against violence.] If you want to report or talk about domestic violence, call the Women’s Helpline at 181. | 
