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Law, police and ‘domestic cruelty’: Assembling written complaints from oral narratives
Contributions to Indian Sociology ( IF 0.938 ) Pub Date : 2019-02-01 , DOI: 10.1177/0069966718812522
Pooja Satyogi 1
Affiliation  

This article examines the relationship between law and the police in the Special Protection Unit for Women and Children (Unit), Delhi. It explicates how women police officers negotiate meanings of ‘domestic cruelty’ under the Dowry Prohibition Act, 1961, read with Section 498-A of the Indian Penal Code (IPC), in a milieu where narratives of violence they encounter from women complainants often challenge interpretations of domestic violence. Taking two instances, one in which a complainant came to the Unit without a written complaint, and the second in which changes were made to the complaint after it was officially submitted, I delineate the shape that their formal complaints took, central to which was the role performed by the police officers assigned to them. The officers, I contend, strove to make the complaints legally stand up, with the awareness that although most complaints do not end in litigation, the act of writing the complaint constituted an important step for complainants to get what I call a working sense of their experiences of cruelty. I conclude that although police’s discretionary power is understood to give way to reckless arbitrariness and discrimination, its mutability and amorphousness can also contribute towards enabling redress for injury.

中文翻译:

法律、警察和“家暴”:从口头叙述中收集书面投诉

本文探讨了德里妇女和儿童特别保护股(股)中法律与警察之间的关系。它解释了女警察如何根据 1961 年《禁止嫁妆法》(与印度刑法典 (IPC) 第 498-A 条一起阅读)协商“家庭虐待”的含义,在这种环境中,她们遇到的女性投诉者的暴力叙述经常受到挑战对家庭暴力的解释。举两个例子,一个是投诉人在没有书面投诉的情况下来到单位,第二个是在正式提交后对投诉进行了更改,我描述了他们的正式投诉的形式,其中核心是由分配给他们的警察执行的角色。我争辩说,这些官员努力使投诉在法律上站得住脚,意识到尽管大多数投诉不会以诉讼告终,但撰写投诉的行为构成了投诉人获得我所说的对其残酷经历的工作感的重要一步。我的结论是,尽管警方的自由裁量权被理解为让位于鲁莽的任意性和歧视,但其可变性和无定性也有助于对伤害进行补救。
更新日期:2019-02-01
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