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Mumbai: The average day for 31-year-old Ganga (name changed for anonymity) starts at 6 am. She cooks and packs food for her children aged six and eight, drops them off at school and leaves for work. After nine hours at work, she comes back home and cooks dinner for the family. On most nights, her husband consumes alcohol and beats her.

Ganga frequently tells employers and friends about her aching arms or hurting back from the previous night’s assault, often laughing it off as a routine occurrence. She has never reported the violence to the police or sought help from other community organisations.

Once, the accredited social health activist (ASHA) who helped her during pregnancy, witnessed the violence and intervened, but not much has changed for her. “I am not going to get a lot of community or legal support – not even from my parents,” says Ganga, who works as a domestic worker and caregiver for an 85-year-old woman.

She makes Rs 12,000 a month and sometimes earns a little extra doing domestic work in the neighbourhood. Her income is spent on her children’s education and groceries. Her husband irons clothes for Rs 200-400 a day, when there is work.

Cases under “cruelty by husband or relatives” account for 27% of crimes against women across India, according to the 2024 report of the National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) released last month. Overall, cases of crime against women, including domestic violence, declined compared to 2023. However, attitudes towards gender equality are still unfavourable in India, according to multiple surveys and studies. Legal experts, researchers and family counsellors caution that the decline in cases is not necessarily a decline in violence.

In 2024, India recorded, on average, 50 cases of crime against women every hour. Crime rate – or cases per 100,000 women – fell from 66.4 in 2022 to 64.6 in 2024. Overall, cases of crime against women fell 1.5% compared to 2023 and domestic violence cases fell 10%, the data show.

Table 1: Crime Against Women, 2022-2024

Source: National Crime Records Bureau; Crime Against Women 2022, 2023, 2024; IPC/BNS Crimes 2022-2024; Police Disposal of Crime Against Women 2022, 2023, 2024, Photo: IndiaSpend.

“I am not surprised if FIRs [first information reports] have reduced; the policy aims for that,” said Sonali Kusum, assistant professor at the School of Law, Rights and Constitutional Governance at the Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai. Women do not want to send their husbands to jail, especially when financially dependent and unable to support their children.

“Many women who approach the legal system want the police or protection officers (POs) to issue warnings to their husbands to change their behaviour,” she explained. POs are quasi-judicial staff who serve as the interface between the legal institutions and the victims/survivors. “Sometimes,........

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