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Set Ablaze by Husbands or In-Laws, Abused Women Struggle to Survive

The fear of stigma prevents many women from talking about violence that is inflicted on them by a husband, in-laws or other family members. A group, above, meets to talk about their experiences. PUSHPA ACHANTA/WFS

By Pushpa Achanta on July 07, 2015

BENGALURU — “The stove exploded in the kitchen,” they say. “Scalding hot water fell on me by accident while I was making tea,” or “I didn’t realize that my clothes caught fire while I was cooking.” These are some of the common explanations from women admitted to the burns ward of Victoria Hospital in the high-tech capital of the Indian State of Karnataka. Sadly, these statements almost always act as a cover-up for the truth, which is both horrific and heartbreaking.

Zarina Khatoon was set on fire by her husband, although the 38-year-old mother of two told everyone that the stove had burst at home. It was several weeks before she could muster the courage to narrate the real story and register a formal complaint. “Once a woman dares to complain against her family there are consequences. One stands to lose everything — respect, family support, and even one’s own children,” she said.

Shocking as it may sound, in India — regardless of region, class, community or age — married women are being burned alive on the flimsiest pretexts, from being thought unattractive or cooking unappetizing meals to bringing insufficient dowry into the marriage, expressing opinions freely, talking to a neighbour or giving birth to daughters: anything and everything can infuriate and incite the husband or the in-laws.

Bride burning, as this occurrence is called, accounts for the death of nearly one woman every hour in India — more than 8,000 women a year, says the National Crime Records Bureau, which reported that 8,233 women, many of them new brides, were killed in dowry-related deaths in 2012; in 2013, statistics indicate that 8,083 died this way. Unfortunately, because this crime takes place inside the home, it limits the scope of intervention by authorities, as it is a considered a personal problem.

It was the fear of stigma and social ostracism that prevented Asha from talking about what had actually happened the night her husband decided to get rid of her by setting her on fire. Sathya, an activist with Vimochana, a women’s rights organization in Bengaluru (formerly Bangalore) that has been assisting distressed girls and women and advocating for their rights for decades, said: “For Asha, who is now in her forties, it has been a long and difficult struggle to find her feet again. It was 10 years back that her husband set her on fire right in front of their daughter. Over the years, Asha has found the strength to forge on for the sake of the young girl.”

Asha struggled to survive for weeks. She has never regained her voice. Today, she communicates through her daughter, Jyoti. “The sprightly adolescent, who is currently pursuing her pre-university studies, often becomes the voice of her mother,” Sathya said. “She was very small when the episode occurred and watched her mother fighting for life.

“As Asha recovered with the help of extensive treatment and counseling, she gradually gained the courage and confidence to share her story through her daughter,” Sathya added. She has observed many women like Asha pull themselves together despite the odds. “She has remained alive for her girl and has managed to secure a job that has helped her become independent even though it may be insufficient to make ends meet.”

How will I sustain myself and my children? Who will pay for my treatment? Will anyone give a disfigured person a job? These are questions that often hold back the Ashas and Zarinas from standing up for themselves. “In a society like ours, which is obsessed with beauty and physical appearance, what chance do women like me have to gain respectable employment?” Zarina asks.

She is not wrong. Burn survivors have low self-esteem when they enter the job market, and most prospective employers are not comfortable with either their appearance or their circumstances, making it doubly difficult for them to find suitable work. For those who do secure a reasonable job, their long-term medical treatment gets in the way. Often they must take short or extended breaks, which employers may not allow.

A combination of justice and adequate rehabilitation can enable a survivor to regain control of her life and destiny. But neither avenue is easy to obtain, especially if the woman happens to be from a lower caste, a tribal or a minority community. Yashoda, founder of the Karnataka Dalit Mahila Vedike, a forum assisting survivors of caste and gender violence, has championed the cause of Dalit (formerly known as untouchable) women for years.

She recalls an incident where concerted action successfully sent a perpetrator to jail. “In 2009, when a Dalit woman had spurned the sexual advances of a man from the dominant [higher] caste, he retaliated by attacking her violently and setting her on fire,” Yashoda says. “After committing the crime, the man simply vanished. A few concerned passersby helped her and she was able to hold on for four days before she died, but the police had been able to take her statement about what happened.”

Yashoda’s survivors’ forum collaborated with other human-rights groups to investigate the incident and complaints were registered at the local police station, followed by large-scale protests. Not only was the man arrested — the case is still in court — but the state government also compensated the family of the victim and promised that the education of her minor children would be supported by the state.

Such a rally to ensure justice does not happen regularly. Donna Fernandes, a co-founder of Vimochana, which has advocated for a separate ward for female burns survivors in Victoria Hospital, much more needs to be done. She said it was “absolutely essential” that laws passed to deal with domestic violence, including the Protection of Women from Domestic Violence Act 2005, must deal with women who have been set on fire by their husbands or in-laws. Such women must by law receive financial and other support for medical care, including physiological and psychological counseling, especially if they have sustained grievous burns.

It is the never-say-die attitude of survivors that really keeps them going. Sylvia, 33, a vegetable vendor in Bengaluru, has been to hell and back. “But I refuse to dwell in the past,” she said. “Life has been anything but simple ever since my husband doused me in kerosene and set me on fire. I take each day as a new challenge. Though I am educated, I did not get a job anywhere. So I am selling vegetables to earn a few hundred rupees a day to support my sons, who are studying in a government school. We live with my mother, a daily wager, who contributes to household expenses as well.”

Women like Sylvia give Fernandes the strength to keep up the fight. “Each day, from Bengaluru alone, we get four to five cases of women being burnt using kerosene,” she said. “Does that mean we ban the sale of kerosene? No. What we all have to work towards is changing mind-sets and traditions that turn seemingly normal people into monsters.”

© Women’s Feature Service

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http://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(09)60706-6/fulltext

 

Volume 373, No. 9671, p1230–1231, 11 April 2009

 

Gender Inequality & Fire-Related Deaths in India

Claudia Garcia-Moreno

 

In The Lancet today, Prachi Sanghavi and colleagues¹ suggest that burns are an important public health concern and a major cause of preventable death in India. Their study shows that most of these deaths (106 000 of 163 000 in 2001) occurred in women, mostly aged 15–34 years. The problem of fire-related deaths and injuries, however, has been undocumented or poorly documented. Sanghavi's lowest estimates for fire-related deaths were more than three times higher than those reported by the police.

In a study of women's health priorities from an analysis of 2005 mortality estimates and disease burden from the Global Burden of Disease study,² burns in young women were common in southeast Asia. This study identified key areas of concern for women by age group and by WHO regions. Burns rated seventh in the top ten causes of deaths and disability-adjusted life years (which is used to estimate the burden of disease in a population due to both disability and premature death) for women aged 15–44 years. Not surprisingly, different regions vary considerably. Overall, injuries were a substantial proportion of deaths in women in all regions, especially in young women (15–44 years of age) in the western Pacific, European, and southeast Asian regions. The specific distribution of mortality from different types of injuries, however, varied by region, with burns being the third cause of death for women aged 15–44 years in southeast Asia, followed by self-inflicted injuries. In addition to deaths, injuries and burns can lead to severe disability and long-term sequelae. Rates of morbidity and mortality due to injuries are probably underestimated in the Global Burden of Disease database and in one of the datasets used by Sanghavi and colleagues, because many injuries, even when severe, do not result in hospital admissions and are therefore often not reported and counted.

Sanghavi and colleagues indicate that burn-related injuries and deaths in India are likely to be caused by: kitchen accidents related to use of kerosene and flammability of garments; self-immolation or suicides; and homicides related to domestic violence. All are plausible and current data do not allow any definite conclusions; therefore, more research is needed to address this point. Some evidence suggests that intimate partner and domestic violence could have an important role. Domestic violence (physical, sexual, and emotional) and other forms of sexual violence and coercion are well known to be substantial and widespread, with women more likely than men to be abused by partners and other family members.³ In India, population-based studies have reported domestic violence by partners and other family members. For example, 25%, 20%, and 16% of women aged 15–49 years in Lucknow, Trivandrum, and Vellore, respectively, had reported physical violence by an intimate partner in the past 12 months; and 35%, 43%, and 31%, respectively, had reported ever having experienced this violence.⁴ Health consequences of this violence include several acute and chronic conditions,^5, 6 but acute injuries and long-term sequelae of abuse are under-reported. These studies are unlikely to document domestic violence in the form of burns because many burnt women might not survive or might be too disabled to participate in these surveys. Studies of femicide from several countries have also shown that 40–70% of female murder victims had been killed by intimate partners.⁴ Although doctors can assess whether the cause of burns is likely to be an accident, a suicide attempt, or a murder (in burns due to stove burst, the midriff is affected, whereas when kerosene is poured on the body burns are spread from head to toe), in India it is often difficult for women to disclose domestic abuse because of concerns about the future care of their children or the presence of the husband or mother-in-law (Deosthali P, Center for Enquiry into Health Allied Themes, Mumbai, India; personal communication).

Suicide and suicide attempts in women are also associated with violence by an intimate partner or other family member.⁷ A way in which women attempt suicide in India is by burning themselves; other common methods include consumption of poisonous substances, such as pesticides or insecticides, or kerosene. Although data are difficult to obtain, small community studies in India have shown that dowry-related violence is important in bride burning and deaths of women. These deaths are reported as suicides, but are also likely to be homicides.⁸ Sanghavi and colleagues report that the National Crime Records Bureau of India documented almost 9000 suicides by fire and self-immolation in both sexes in 2005, and 6787 dowry deaths.

Sanghavi and colleagues' findings show that fire-related injuries and deaths are an important public health problem in India, which is also probably true in some other countries in southeast Asia. Many, if not most, of these deaths are preventable. Although Sanghavi analysed existing data on deaths in depth, more research (qualitative and quantitative) is needed to better understand the extent of this problem. For cooking-stove accidents, cooking modalities and other modifications to improve safety are an urgent intervention. For domestic violence, primary prevention strategies—including addressing discrimination against women and girls, and other social norms that make this form of violence regarded as normal and acceptable—should be a priority. Furthermore, the public health system has a key role in training health professionals on violence-related issues, so that they are equipped to respond to specific needs, including mental health issues, of survivors. Accurate documentation of the injuries, the incident, and the care provided is crucial in seeking justice.

My views in this Comment are not necessarily those of WHO. I declare that I have no conflicts of interest.

References – See Website