Mumbai Police Gets Training To Handle Gender Based Complaints

The Society for Nutrition, Education and Health Action or SNEHA has developed a game in order to sensitize the police about the way they deal with the matters related to women and children. For this, a group of nearly 25 policemen assembled at the DB Marg police station hall in south Mumbai. While being off duty for some seven hours, they played this game that told them how confident a person feels to visit them for lodging a complaint.

The main goal of the game and the training sessions is to sensitize policemen when it comes to dealing with the crimes against women and children.

Dr. Nayreen Daruwala, program director at SNEHA, told The Indian Express, “The point of this game or even the sessions we carry out for the cops is to make them realize on their own how the system is skewed against a certain section of the society. Once they reach that point on their own, it will make them more sensitive to particular groups of people like transgenders, who have a difficult time getting a complaint registered.”

The NGO has been carrying out training sessions for police since last September. As of now, they are conducting around 75 training sessions with over 90 police stations across Mumbai. The main goal of the game and the training sessions is to sensitize policemen when it comes to dealing with the crimes against women and children.

So what is this game?

In this game, there are several chits in a box with a role written on them, either a transgender, an uneducated woman or a rich urban male. The policemen have to draw a chit and the role on the chit will be assigned to them. Each one of them then faces a different crisis and has to visit the police station. The cop takes a step forward every time a person feels like visiting the police station with his/her problem and stands still while if the person isn’t confident about visiting the police station. At the end of the game, it was found that the uneducated woman did not take even a step whereas the rich urban male went the farthest.

The NGO has been carrying out training sessions for police since last September. As of now, they are conducting around 75 training sessions with over 90 police stations across Mumbai.

This process started in 2013 when the NGO approached 130 police personnel and asked them about the way they deal with the cases of sexual assault, domestic violence and crimes against children. Thereby, they formed a set of guidelines, which were initially followed at two police stations Nehru Nagar in Kurla East and Mahim. “After it worked successfully there, we implemented it at five more police stations. It was only in September 2018 that we received permission to carry out such programs at all police stations across the city. We have plans to complete 75 sessions and we have finished over 40 already,” said Sachin Kulkarni from SNEHA.

One of the policemen who attended the session said, “I think the main help most of us got is how to deal with complainants in domestic violence cases. Normally, in such situations, there is a lack of clarity on what is the right course of action. Now, we have been told that when a woman approaches us, we have to make her comfortable and inform the protection officer (PO). We have also been given lists of POs across the city.”

Picture Credit: Mumbai Live

Read More: Haryana Roadways Tried to Kill Me: Shooter Manu Bhaker Tweets