Stories of scores of women facing domestic violence during the lockdown due to COVID-19 are being witnessed and reported at a regular pace. However, even without a lockdown, domestic abuse is a reality that many women face on a day to day basis in their lives. There are a lot of issues women face and these are not limited to domestic violence alone.
Pink Legal – How it started
Manasi Choudhari, the founder of Pink Legal, is a practicing advocate from Hyderabad. She is very passionate about women’s rights and gender equality. She has worked under Justice DY Chandrachud on three landmark judgments viz; Sabrimala Issue, Decrimilanisation of Homosexuality and Adultery.
Manasi went through a nightmarish experience about two years ago, which became an impetus to start Pink Legal.
She was traveling through the upmarket Jubilee Hills area in Hyderabad around 8:30 pm on her two-wheeler, when a couple of drunk men heckled her, teased her, and passed by so close to her vehicle, that she fell down and hurt herself quite badly.
Though she was rattled by the experience, she decided she couldn’t keep quiet. She went to the nearby police station and registered her complaint, where the police helped her to get medical assistance and get home safely. Her complaint enabled the police to search for the miscreants and take action against them.
Rather than feeling sorry for herself, Mansi saw this incident as an opportunity to help others avoid bad experiences or at the very least understand their options.
“I knew that I could get those trouble makers punished for their crimes. I knew at least these people would hesitate before they think about hurting other women like me. While I knew the system would support me, many women don’t know that and are afraid that they might be victim-shamed. That is the reason I have started Pink Legal,” said Manasi.
The launch
Pink Legal was launched on women’s day this year with the sole purpose of creating more awareness about women’s rights and to help women with their legal queries.
Their website has a plethora of information on various kinds of laws that are directly or indirectly related to women’s issues. The laws are broadly characterized by property laws, laws related to child abuse, sexual abuse, marital laws, etc. Pink Legal also allows women to reach out to them directly with their situation, to get free legal advice. They also help them connect to any legal counselors, should they choose to exercise that option.
Manasi explains that they get a lot of queries on an everyday basis. The most common ones pertain to physical, emotional, and sexual torture in marriages and aren’t easy to listen to these tales of suffering that many women narrate.
When any woman shares her positive experience with Pink Legal, the entire team sleeps a bit better that day.
Campaigns
Pink Legal team launched a campaign called “21 Days – 21 Rights” when the first lockdown was announced. Through this campaign, they created awareness about one social problem and law pertaining to it, every day for 21 days.
Many women expressed that this campaign helped them understand their options and laws better. Post-lockdown-1, they continued creating regular social media posts and videos to create awareness of various laws. Some of the more popular posts have brought about clarity on women’s inheritance laws, cyberbullying, cyber safety among others.
The path ahead
Pink Legal’s team believes that they would continue to do advocacy for women’s rights and issues, while simultaneously working on creating a network of support structure that they can reach out to, such as legal counsel, assistance with suits if any, support from a network of counselors and NGOs among other things.