Women Criminals on the rise?/ Sept 17, 2005, DNA

They're more victims than criminals
Gayatri Jayaraman, DNA News
It will never quite be the same to be a woman in Mumbai again. Sharmila, Amishi, Preeti, and Tarannum have, perhaps, forever changed whatever little the inelegant ladies storming railway compartments at peak hour did not.

A diploma holder in advanced computing, Tarannum Khan is the latest to be thrust into the limelight. A little over a year ago it was Sharmila Shanbag, the first ever Indian woman to be extradited from Germany with an Interpol Red Corner notice. In between, came the elitist Amishi Vaish (who kidnapped Vaibhav Agarwal, the 16-year-old son of Mumbai-based stock broker Ramdev Agarwal), and the bewildering Preetii Jaiin (who is alleged to have paid a 'supari' to the underworld to murder film director Madhur Bhandarkar).

This could well have a little bit of history. In 1975, feminist theorist Freda Adler in her 'Sisters in Crime' stated her belief that the 1970's second wave of feminism consequently coincided with a 'dramatic' upsurge in women's criminal activity. Has the wave caught up with Mumbai, too?

Prayas director Vijay Raghavan, a field action project of TISS and one of the few NGOs working for women prisoners within state prisons, differs. "I wouldn't correlate it quite so simplistically, but it is symptomatic of the social migration of women. It is said society creates crime, and individuals commit it. Crime is a complete economic system. There is a demand for it and hence there is supply." Hence, he says, there is little logic to projecting Tarannum as a criminal in a society of which she is probably also a victim.
"Any marginalised community may rise against its oppressors to get even, but that does not erase the facts of its marginalisation," points out a feminist voice - filmmaker Madhushree Dutta.

"Let's not forget that though Preetii Jaiin and Tarannum are being painted as criminals now, the fact remains that both were victims." Preetii, an alleged victim of the casting couch, in itself a huge crime, and Tarannum of the exploitation of sexuality by bookies and bar life. Crimes that both attempted to control, but failed. Both remain pawns in the system they fight.

"The media is extremely harsh to women in crime. Their motives are sought and held up to scrutiny, but few ever question the social process behind it," says Raghavan. Working for over 15 years, he has derived that the dividing line is not between the women with economic motives and those without, but rather the social migration of women with or without support.

"The woman with support remains protected by the system despite its apparent inequalities, but the one who breaks away, whether an educated woman who needs to assert individualism, or an economically backward one who needs to fend for her family, also moves away from the protection that the family, typically the male domain, provides. In this process, the woman is more prone to negative influences."
Raghavan believes that women thrust or 'liberated' into supportless social situations, often have little actual choice in the matter. "A woman with no social support becomes dependent on the relationships she builds in the process of social migration. Being active in taking charge of their lives, these women were often exploited by the relationships they built with the people, such as middlemen, who allowed them to break away, and socially migrate. Women in such situations tend to think 'even if I have nothing else, at least I'm making money' and they hold onto that until the social support they hope for, most often in the form of a dependable man, who may or may never come their way."

Raghavan still believes crime essentially remains a man's domain. "Despite all the hype, let's not forget that women commit only 5% of the crime in Mumbai and probably only 1 to 2% of that in other places.