Women in India

Custodial horror is a daily occurrence for women prisoners in India. After all, what can women do when their ‘custodians’ become their violators? The question is very intimidating and frightening but this is actually happening to women in India. There have been innumerable cases where ‘men-in-khaki,’ as we usually refer to the police as, have been caught outraging the women prisoners’ modesty, inside and outside the jail. Worse, women prisoners in India are not just raped but they are even murdered by policemen. The state of Maharashtra has registered the highest number of custodial deaths i.e. 316, followed by Uttar Pradesh (255) and BJP-ruled Gujarat (190) in the last 16 years. According to the National Human Rights Commission, there are 2318 cases of custody deaths across the country, all of which have been committed by policemen, since October 1993.