referred for softer assignments. They are right. Out of 117 police stations, Delhi has only one woman SHO, no woman assistant commissioner of police in any of its 37 sub-divisions, no deputy police commissioner to head the nine districts and no joint police commissioner for the three ranges. Now, Union home secretary Kamal Pande talks about an all- women police station in Delhi. It is needed sooner than later. Perhaps with a facility which allows complaints by women to be mandatorily registered there irrespective of jurisdictional restriction. Specially, because NCRB has projected Delhi will become the most unsafe city for women by 2020. Taking stock of violence against women The Times of India News Service NEW DELHI: Violence against women causes more deaths and disabilities than various illnesses put together, according to the World Health Organisation (WHO). A three-day workshop, organised by the Society for Operations Research and Training (SORT) in collaboration with the Centre for Operations Research and Training (CORT) here, emphasised that violence against women should be recognised as a violation of human rights. The workshop was supported by WHO, UNICEF, the Ford Foundation and the Population Council. A CORT study identified refusal to sex as one of the most common reasons for male aggressiveness. More than two-thirds of women in rural Uttar Pradesh were subjected to violence for refusing sex to their husband and one-third were subjected to forced sex. Such violence could have fatal effect on women, leading to suicide or killing, the study said. Another study of court records in Maharashtra showed 120 cases of dowry deaths and all these women were below 25 years of age. Another study from Delhi revealed that 56 per cent of all suicides were by women. ``Marital discord'' was the common reason. Studies among poor rural women in India have shown that the extent of violence can be as high as 76 per cent. A recent study by the Inte...
