success story
PBET has been vigorously engaged with women survivors of violence in their struggle of justice and rehabilitation. Under the programme WinG-Assam members of PBET selflessly go forward to help the survivors. Since 2009 PBET has been handling more than 300 cases of violence against women and cases of other forms of human rights violations. It helps the survivors in their legal process right from filing complaint to court procedures, compensation, rehabilitation, counseling etc. PBET uses both national and international human rights mechanisms to raise the issues of human rights violation in the state of Assam.
In 2013 survivors of violence were organized and formed Nirjatita Mahila Aikya Manch, a solidarity group of women survivors was a landmark, where they help each other. Through this forum they have come out from the stage of victimhood to a change agent.
Sunita(name changed) a survivor of domestic violence and molestation by her brother-in-law. She lost her case and then she was chased out from her matrimonial house. She went through several rounds of trauma counseling and also attended legal and personality development training programmes organized by PBET. Now she is the fine example of transition from victimhood to an agent of change. Now she has been assisting many survivors to fight against violence and protect their rights. In one of the cases a survivor was denied to register a case of repeated attempt to rape by her brother- in-law in the police station, Sunita helped the survivor to go along with her to police station in late evening and convinced the police to register the case. Sunita continuously monitored the case so that police investigate the case properly. Sunita in fact protected her from the unnecessary harassment by police in the name of investigation (which is a common phenomenon). At last with great effort of Sunita the case had been charge sheeted on time and the accused was convicted and given punishment of 5 years rigorous imprisonment. Though Sunita lost her own legal battle but she never gave up and succeeded in bringing justice to other woman survivor.
Following are the compensation order received by survivors and family members due to great efforts of the members of PBET and WinG-Assam:
- Rs.3, 60,000 to survivor of Acid Attack in Darang District through DLSA, Darang in 2014
- Rs.5, 00, 000 to the family members of a victim of Extrajudicial Killing in Kokrajhar by NHRC in 2015
- Rs.2, 00,000 to the survivor of custodial torture (lost one limb) in Jorhat by AHRC 2015.
- Rs.10, 000 under Assam victim compensation scheme, in 2012 by DLSA, Jorhat in 2014 and Rs.3000 by Jorhat Session Court in 2015 to a girl survivor of molestation.
- Rs.20, 000 to minor survivor of grievous hurt under Assam victim compensation scheme, 2012 by DLSA, Cachar.
The story of "RENGANI NURSERY" as a successful initiative of "Women Alliance against Violence" to provide employment opportunity to women survivors had been published as a cover story on 5th January, 2018 edition of "Sadin" a weekly newspaper in Assamese. The story is also covered by "Prag news" on 8th January, 2018 in their daily news episode " Prag prime time" at 7p.m.