By Jagriti Mahajan & Prateek Singh Kundu
A procedural code in any country performs multiple roles such as creating guidelines for legal officers to follow and creating the very structure in which the criminal system exists. One such function that it fulfils is protecting individuals from abuse of police power and excesses of state machinery. The CrPC in India lays down several provisions to protect the interests and rights of women.
However, often such rights get lost in the myriads of procedural provisions and people often don’t know about them. This article seeks to analyse the trends that emerge from a survey regarding awareness of women’s rights under CrPC. The sample size is 311 and the form was filled by individuals of various genders and educational background selected survey was that women are more likely to know about such provisions, since these rights are pertaining to women and therefore, they have greater incentive to acquaint themselves with them.
Given the kind of harassment women face on a daily basis it is expected that they’ll know about such rights more often than men would. Typically, it was found that in most questions the proportion of women that got the right answer was roughly the same as the proportion of men. The second parameter for analysis was extent of education.
The levels of education that were looked at were 10th pass or below, 12th pass and graduate or post graduate randomly. The kind of questions asked sought to assess the individual’s awareness regarding CrPC provisions liked to rights of women. The analysis of the trends was done around 3 parameters with an independent hypothesis set for each which were gender, the extent of education and primary sources of news.
The first parameter in which the awareness of people was judged was gender. The hypothesis set out before the In certain questions, such as the question regarding whether or not a woman can be arrested by a male police officer was answered correctly by slightly higher proportion of men. On the other hand, the question relating to whether or not a woman stopped by male police traffic officer can refuse to speak to him was answered correctly by a significantly higher proportion of women (Fig 2).
Therefore, it was found that the hypothesis set out wasn’t supported by data. One possible reason for this could be that CrPC and its provision are not easily accessible by people in general and so even if there exists a greater desire in women to acquaint themselves with their rights the lack of access and discourse prevents them from doing it. Milestone The second parameter for analysis was extent of education.
The levels of education that were looked at were 10th pass or below, 12th pass and graduate or post graduate. The hypothesis set up was that groups with higher level of education were expected to know more about these rights than groups with lesser education. Significant disparity was expected between the first and the third group.
Even then the correlation of age with education and awareness of legal provisions is not likely to be contradictory or impact the findings adversely In all questions, a higher proportion of the third group (Graduate + PG) answered correctly as compared to the first two groups. The obvious explanation for this trend is that a higher level of education gives individuals access to a greater expense of information as well as educational resources. Further, individuals with higher levels of education are more likely to understand and engage with social realities.
It is important to note however, that the analysis did not control for age and there might be some correlation of age with the result. Primarily because younger age groups are less likely to educate themselves on legal provisions. Even then the correlation of age with education and awareness of legal provisions is not likely to be contradictory or impact the findings adversely.
Lastly, the survey also took into account the primary news sources that people have. The hypothesis set up was that individuals who get their information and news from social media are more likely to know about such provisions for two reasons. Firstly, information is highly accessible on social media.
Most news agencies have some sort of presence on social media and individuals also share articles amongst themselves. Secondly, social media has proven to be an excellent platform for raising awareness regarding women’s rights as has been evident in instances such as the ‘Me too’ movement or the kind of outrage that happened after Nirbhaya incidence.
She may request for female police personnel’ was picked by a higher proportion of women) social media does create avenues for greater awareness there is no guarantee of specific information such as provisions for women under CrPc being spread. Apart from the primary trends that were analysed, some interesting things came up in the analysis of the survey, for instance it was found that individuals of the group 12th pass, got the correct answer fewer times, than individuals belonging to the group- 10th pass or below. However, it was found that on most questions individuals deriving news from non-social media sources answered correctly more often.
Therefore, the hypothesis was not supported by data. The possible explanation for this is that firstly, while social media does make information more accessible the quality or correctness of this information is often something that is not assured. There have been several instances where false information has floated around platforms such as Facebook and WhatsApp.
Secondly, while This survey does point to certain important aspects with regard to what people know and how they find out about rights of women under CrPc. It seems that social media is clearly not a good enough medium with regard to spreading awareness. Given the extremely important nature of this information, it should be made more easily accessible to school students so as to generate greater awareness regarding women’s rights amongst the youth.
This survey was undertaken not only as an academic project but also as a personal enquiry into whether people know about basic rights of women. It’s disheartening to see a lack of awareness with regard to such legal provisions. An effort must be made to ensure with these provisions that protect women from police abuse and harassment become common knowledge and more easily accessible.
Such information can be spread through legal clinics, lawyer initiatives as well as physical and virtual campaigns. Law students particularly have the ability to spread this information amongst their peers, family and relatives and this is something that should be done.