Women and girls with disabilities due to domestic abuse will be entitled to monetary and infrastructural support, according to a new scheme, ‘Gharelu Hinsa Ki Peedita Ke Liye Sahita Yojna’ approved on Tuesday by the Madhya Pradesh government.
The scheme will cover women and girls in the State who have sustained permanent disabilities resulting from injuries inflicted by their blood relatives or in marital relations.
The scheme will provide financial assistance of up to Rs 2 lakh to those with up to 40 percent permanent disability and Rs 4 four lakh to those above 40 percent permanent disability.
The scheme was formulated after the Chief Minister of Madhya Pradesh Shivraj Singh Chouhan took cognizance of three gruesome instances of domestic violence within 17 days. In all three cases, women had their hands and legs severed by their husbands.
Additional Chief Secretary of Women and Child Development (WCD) department Ashok Shah told The Indian Express: “It was after these incidents that the Chief Minister had asked for a scheme to be formulated to assist women who face violence at the hands of their relatives. The central idea was that the government should be able to step in and provide protection to women who cannot even turn to their own family.”
According to the scheme, which the Cabinet approved on Tuesday, a victim of domestic violence – be it a married woman or a girl who has a permanent disability – can approach the district protection officer or state-run one-stop centre seeking assistance. The victims can themselves or through an application, inform the district protection officer about such an instance within one year of the attack.
