Lean on Me!

As Hyderabad Police's Bharosa completes one eventful year of existence, the team awaits crucial additions that can make the Centre a complete, one-stop crisis intervention centre

Victims of serious crimes seldom know what course of action to take. They have no clue either of evidence or of sections in law that will bring them justice. They know not when and how to approach an enforcement agency.

And, they almost never know that they can be re-victimised in their desperate quest for justice. That they can be subjected to a gruelling process of investigation and prosecution which may very well make them forget the severity of the very crime they are reporting.

Who comes to the rescue of such victims in an effective and timely manner? This is a question that found an answer from the most appropriate authorities in Hyderabad and the answer manifested itself in a most unique, one-stop crisis intervention centre for women and children who face untold crimes and harassment, violence and victimisation.

Bharosa is an initiative of the Hyderabad Police under the Women and Child Development Department, in partnership with Tharuni, an NGO. The Home Minister is heading the Governing Body and the City Police Commissioner heads the Executive Committee. Bharosa just completed one year of its existence recently.

Since its inception exactly one year ago, Bharosa has handled almost 2,000 cases with 1432 Domestic Violence cases, 162 POCSO cases with 29 children less than 10 years violated, 51 rape cases and 286 miscellaneous cases. A big number considering that the Centre itself is a new concept.

“The main problem with these crimes is that their reportage is low because there's a social stigma associated with police reports. That is why people should come to Bharosa. It helps in a comprehensive manner.

Women should stand up for themselves," says Swati Lakra, IPS, Additional Commissioner of Police, She Teams and Bharosa.

Although Bharosa has already established its credentials as a well-designed mechanism for crisis intervention, the learning process has just begun and each day shows up new gaps and challenges, says the team behind it.

"When we set up Bharosa, the main challenge was to set it up as an NGO. The Hyderabad Police has not done anything like this before. Finding funding, building infrastructure was a challenge. But the support we have received is wonderful, with no red tape virtually and with total functional flexibility.

That combined with very effective partnerships with various organisations and a passionately involved team makes Bharosa an unprecedented success,” explains Dr Mamatha Raghuveer, Founder, Tharuni, and the brain behind Bharosa.

From the day Bharosa started functioning, each case that came along taught the team something new. While the Union Government had envisaged Bharosa as a one-stop crisis centre for even emergency cases such as the Nirbhaya incident but the Hyderabad centre’s experience is that there are more of incidents that emerge out over a period of time, especially marital violence, rape in the family and child abuse.

“I was speaking to a girl, who is an engineering graduate but has been facing terrible harassment from her in-laws. They are so dominating that she had to abort her pregnancy twice as they bid her to. A third time, as she attempted suicide, the Lake Police brought her in. If this is the case with educated people, imagine how many cases must be going unreported,” Kanakadurga Kalidindi, Centre Administrator, cites a case.

Bharosa offers an umbrella of services including police and prosecution, case registration, women helpline, legal and psychological counselling, video conferencing, victim rehabilitation, etc. And yet, there are gaps.

They conduct awareness campaigns with 22 communities, 43 schools and a total of 9700 people reached till date. De-addiction workshops have been conducted and 21 group counselling sessions were held. Around 106 people have been placed in employment as part of a rehab programme.

The Judicial process continues to be slow, though video conference with the court has significantly reduced trauma for the victims. There is still no scope for long-term rehabilitation as the victims go back into the same family fold of which the perpetrator is a member.

Even when a rowdy sheet is taken out, the perpetrator still gets out in a short while. There is a need to expand services like psychiatric care and expert legal advice. The team also lament that indiscreet media coverage also sometimes puts the case process in jeopardy.

“Especially in cases of child abuse - the cases under Protection of Children from Sexual Offences Act - there is no scope for proper rehabilitation. The children are perforce sent back to the same family, a home that is virtually the scene of the crime as almost always the rapist or molester is someone known to the child. We need a separate home where the child can go through a holistic therapy, at least until the prosecution of the guilty is over,” says Kanakadurga.

“There is a change in the outlook, the way a police system is viewed and approached. Yet, we do not have a system like in the western countries where there is a facility for a direct walk-in. It’s only now that issues cropping up from a new lifestyle such as rape in live-in relationships are getting reported.

Juvenile welfare is not extensive in our country and we do not have a concept of working on the culprit as well. Often, analysing the perpetrator’s psyche and giving therapy may prevent further crimes,” says Dr Mamatha.

Apart from all this, a very crucial issue that comes in the way of optimisation of a mechanism such as Bharosa is the lack of in-house medical check-up. Though the victims are taken to a Government hospital, with staff accompanying them, the process is often counter-productive.

“When a rape survivor approaches us, we need to ensure that a medical examination is conducted within 24 hours for evidence to be intact. The case gets watered down for lack of evidence. Government doctors shy away from this as it involves the doctor to later report to the court as well.”

The Bhaorsa team is now trying to get Bharosa recognised under Section 164 (A) of IPC enforced with a GO, allowing a local authority designated by the Government to have an in-house medical check-up for the victims. A four-member doctors’ committee has already recommended such a move and once the Government passes the GO, Bharosa will take a significant leap forward in helping the victim.

“Rapists escape most of the time with no punishment or little punishment because of the lacunae in POCSO as well as our prosecution mechanisms. For instance, though we manage to have a statement recorded here through video conference, the technical soundness of such a statement can still be challenged. We are trying to get HC guidelines for this.

We need more professionalism as our staff is still inclined towards sympathy rather than empathy. We need more good psychologists. And Bharosa's jurisdiction is just Hyderabad. That also restricts our reach. We need more long-term rehabilitation efforts with our own infrastructure.

If we can address all these gaps, we can achieve so much more,” says Dr Mamatha. A survivor of a sexual crime undergoes a complex set of emotions - fear, shame, trauma, pain, loneliness, confusion and hopelessness.

Making such a person travel a complicated and often humiliating path to the possibility of justice is nothing but re-perpetration of a crime. And when it is a child, the trauma is even more intense and scars the child forever. This is where an institutional mechanism, operated with a human touch by the mammoth Hyderabad Police, makes a difference. And stands as a perfect prototype of how a redressal mechanism should work.

By: Usha Turaga-Revelli