'National Dalit Movement for Justice (NDMJ), headquartered in New Delhi, has released a detailed report on increasing human rights violation cases against Dalits, Adivasis and other marginalized communities of India during COVID-19 lockdown. In April and May alone during the nationwide lockdown, NDMJ and SASY intervened in 67 cases of caste and gender-based violence, the nature of these cases revealing layered untouchability through socio-economic boycott and physical assault as the main cause.
'The Delhi Police’s Special Cell on Friday ‘arrested’ Pinjra Tod activist and Jawaharlal Nehru University student Natasha Narwal who was already in custody and booked her under the draconian Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act. The FIR under which she has been charged — 59/2020 — is the same one that has been used by the Delhi Police Special Cell against Jamia Millia Islamia students Safoora Zargar, Asif Tanha, Sharjeel Imam and other anti-CAA campaigners, all of whom are facing charges under sections 13, 16, 17 and 18 of the UAPA...'
'The Delhi Police, which on Saturday arrested two founding members of the women-led rights movement Pinjra Tod for taking part in a sit-in protest against the Citizenship Amendment Act at Jafrabad in February this year, re-arrested the two after they were granted bail. This time, police claimed to have acted on an FIR that includes murder charges. Devangana Kalita and Natasha Narwal, both students of New Delhi’s Jawaharlal Nehru University, had been at the forefront of the Pinjra Tod movement, which started as an effort to break punitive hostel curfew hours for women...'
'On May 8, Mamta, who had boarded a Shramik Special train at Gujarat's Jamnagar went into labour and by the time she got off at her destination in Bihar's Chappra, she had a baby in her arms. A team of doctors along with railway staff supervised Mamta as she delivered a healthy baby girl after her compartment was converted into a makeshift labour room, according to railway official...'
'“It was around 7 PM in the evening on 8 May. I was in my house, cutting fruits for iftar. My husband was sitting on the bed at the other corner of the room, playing with my one-year-old daughter when some policemen barged into the house, dragged him outside and thrashed him mercilessly.”... Rehana* said she pleaded with the police to let her husband at least break his Ramzaan fast with a drop of water. “But they did not relent,” she said, breaking down beside the plate of chopped fruits...'
'Family members of arrested Jamia Millia Islamia student Safoora Zargar say they are “appalled and upset” by the attempts made to slander her on social media, but her husband says he is keeping faith in the country’s judicial system. Zargar, a 27-year-old M.Phil. student from Jamia, is over three months pregnant, and was arrested by the Delhi Police’s special cell on 10 April. She was later denied bail and, on 21 April, charged under the stringent Unlawful Activities Prevention Act (UAPA).
'...15-year-old Babita is from Jhansi. She came to Phalodi for work, but this unprecedented lockdown has her hustling for the most basic of needs. She got her periods five days ago, and is using ash smeared on pieces of cloth she’s tearing from the three sets of clothes she had. She said, “Bahar sote hain, baarish hoti hai tab bhi, kapde dhoke vahi pehen rahi hun.” (We sleep outside even when it rains, I wash the clothes when the blood leaks, so I can wear the same clothes again.)...
'A domestic worker has been working in a South Delhi household for the past 15 years but her employer has bothered neither attended her telephone call nor called her back to check about her well-being since the COVID-19 lockdown that started on March 25. Like her, many domestic workers across the country are just abandoned by their employers in the hour of crisis, asking them not to come to their houses for work, denied full payment for March and not even bothering to pay them in April...'
'More than one-third of the world’s population is under lockdown. The recent UN Women’s Report titled ‘Covid-19 and ending violence against women and girls’ has reported that since the outbreak of Covid-19, violence against women, and particularly domestic violence, has increased in several countries as security, health and financial worries create tensions and strain accentuated by the cramped and confined living conditions of a lockdown. Billions of people are now sheltering at home from the global impact of Covid-19...'
'India could find itself in an acute health crisis over the next few months and the direct cause of it will not be the SARS-CoV-2 virus. Hundreds of thousands of children might already have missed vital immunizations, shows a Mint analysis of the latest health ministry data. Thousands of adults may have missed potentially life-saving medical treatment as the novel coronavirus epidemic spread and a lockdown came into force.
