NEW DELHI: Violence within the confines of home continues to remain a serious concern with 24% (6,237) of the total 25,743 complaints received by the National Commission for Women over 2024 pertaining to domestic violence. Largely keeping with trends noticed in previous years, complaints from women seeking "right to live with dignity" continue to top the list, accounting for nearly 28% of the total cases in 2024, followed by domestic violence and dowry harassment.
Data available on the NCW website till Dec 31 showed that 17% (4,383) of the total complaints received last year were related to dowry harassment, and there were also 292 complaints of dowry deaths. This yet again brings into focus the challenges women face within their marital homes.
The 2024 data, however, showed an overall decline in complaints from 2023 when the number from across all categories of crime against women was 28,811. Out of the total complaints in 2023, there were 6,350 of domestic violence.
Of the total complaints in 2024, 54% (13,868) were received from Uttar Pradesh followed by nearly 9% from Delhi (2,245), 5.1% from Maharashtra (1,317), 4.8% from Bihar (1,233), 4.2% from Madhya Pradesh (1,070), and 4.1% from Haryana (1,048).
The 2024 data reinforced past trends of women safety with the commission receiving as many as 1,550 (6%) complaints pertaining to "outraging modesty of women/molestation", followed by 1,422 (5.5%) complaints of rape and attempt to rape, and 1,015 (4%) complaints of sexual harassment. More than 600 complaints of stalking and voyeurism, 523 complaints of cyber-crime against women and 205 cases of sexual harassment at workplace were also received by the NCW.
It is also critical to note that despite the overall decline in complaints in 2024 , the number is still higher than the pre-Covid numbers, when the overall complaints were 19,730 in 2019 and around 23,722 in 2020 when the pandemic struck. The complaints had shot up to more than 30,000 in 2021 and 2022, and then declined for the first time in 2023.
There was a global outcry over the rise in domestic violence across countries during the pandemic. The number of complaints of domestic violence between 2019 and 2024 shows that the highest number of complaints in this category were received in 2022 at 6,986 out of a total of 30,957 complaints, followed by 6,688 out of 30,865 in 2021. In 2019, complaints of domestic violence stood at 2,960 out of 19,730 total complaints. This shot up to 5,297, out of a total of 23,722 complaints, in 2020 - the first year of the pandemic.