Legal eagle Satish Maneshinde flew in and Mumbai Police Commissioner Sanjay Pandey joined him on the dais to speak on ‘Crime Against Women: Instant Remedial Actions’. The talk on Wednesday evening was hosted by the women’s wing of the Indian Merchants Chamber (IMC) at their Churchgate building. Pandey, after introductions to the primarily female audience, said, “Women need to come forward and lodge complaints when they are victims of violence. Without a complaint we can do nothing really.” Pandey said, “My control room usually calls every morning to apprise me about the crimes committed, and at least 50 per cent of those are against women. Crime has skyrocketed.”

Pandey stressed that women live in denial of abuse or have delusions that the man will return, when he has clearly abandoned her. He gave an example, “There was a case in a high-rise in western suburbs wherein the husband had run off to England with another woman. The wife, a director in some company, was afraid she would be deliberately embroiled in cases, simply to be harassed. Women have been abandoned but so many of them continue thinking they are still married. There is tremendous mental harassment and yet at times the cultural upbringing is such that they think he will come back, and are reluctant to file any complaint at all.”