Some of the first calls to a new women’s crisis center in central India were from six women who said they were being hunted in their villages after being branded as witches.
In response, the center sent an emergency team of social workers to the district of Hoshangabad in the central Indian state of Madhya Pradesh to investigate the claims and rescue the women, who have gone into hiding, said Sarika Sinha, regional manager of the non-profit Action Aid India, which helps run the center called Gauravi.
Among the minefield of issues that women in India navigate, including abuse, violence and torture, single women in rural India who inherit property are sometimes branded witches so that male members of their community can seize the land, said Ms. Sinha.
If these women agreed to be rescued, the first priority would be to get them out of danger and bring them to the center in Bhopal, Ms. Sinha said.
The Gauravi center, which was inaugurated Monday by India’s Health Minister Harsh Vardhan and Bollywood actor Aamir Khan is the latest in a string of initiatives to protect women that have started to operate since New Delhi created its own 24-hour helpline for women a week after a 23-year-old student was gang-raped and murdered in December 2012.
Sexual violence has since been widely discussed in India, and the law has been changed to protect women.
The Gauravi center shines a spotlight on women’s issues that seems to be filtering from the capital to other parts of the country. The Delhi helpline is being expanded nationally, including most recently to the central state of Chhatisgarh, according to a news report in the Times of India.
via New Women’s Helpline Widens Efforts to Stop Sexual Violence in India – India Real Time – WSJ.
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