What impact have Covid-19 pandemic era on violence against women in India from January 2020 to December 2021- A Retrospective comparative research study

The safety of women is of signicance and prime concern in India due to a huge female population, equity issues, gender issues, lack of positive deviance at community level, illiteracy, socio-economic factors, migration from rural to urban areas, inaccessibility to legal help and of course many more factors. The SARS-CoV-2 pandemic had presented a challenge even for developed nations around the world regarding women’s protection in the ongoing pandemic era & especially in the lockdown period when it’s really dicult to go out and shout for help. India should have various strategies to ensure safety of women and their mental health issues in such pandemic like situations. It seems that present laws and regulations are insucient to give the desired results. The barriers of legal and protective system and delivery of helpful services etc. constraints should be rectied added with a proper dynamic plan to carry on usual women protection services even in pandemics and natural disasters.


Introduction
In an estimates on violence published by WHO they found that globally about 1 in 3 (30%) of women across all nations have experienced either physical and/or sexual violence or non-partner sexual violence during their lifetime. The implementation of lockdowns to control the COVID-19 pandemic has social and economic impacts. This have increased the exposure of women to abusive inmates and limiting their access to services. This situation of humanitarian crises and displacement may increase existing violence, such as by intimate partners, as well as other-partner sexual violence, and may also lead to increase of violence against women [1]. The author request readers to go through previous preprint on this research study for better understanding [2,3,4] The protection of women is of utmost importance and prime concern in India due to a huge population, equity issues, lack of positive deviance at community level, illiteracy, socio-economic factors, migration from rural to urban areas, inaccessibility to legal help and of course many more factors. The SARS-CoV-2 pandemic had presented a challenge even for developed nations around the world regarding women's protection in the ongoing pandemic era & especially in the lockdown period when it's really di cult to go out and shout for help.
The police force and other protective forces have been largely deployed to tackle the situation of pandemic of Covid-19. This shift has tremendous effect on ongoing various violence against women's in the pandemic era. Pregnant mother & children's are especially more vulnerable groups. The women's usually have a sense of fear in meeting others particularly in pandemic acute emergency situations.
Moreover most of the women's have to stay in home due to lockdown enforcement and added to this as per protocols the community and system both have constrains erupting from the sudden situations of pandemic. The mental health of women's having violence as well as workload with social-issues is a major concern globally added to income loss and various socio-economic determinants of health. Loss of jobs , stress , reduced income, lockdown, violence, domestic con icts and several other factors related to daily livelihood creates a vicious cycle and the women gets entangled in this cycle particularly in pandemic and lockdown situations.
The advocacy for maternal health, women empowerment have been done and emphasised by many national and international organisation for several decades considering them especially vulnerable groups in times of disaster such as pandemic. The Covid-19 pandemic has clearly disclosed the weakness of protective system to protect above mentioned vulnerable groups. The situation also produced a demand of separate cadre to protect women in situations of disaster like pandemic. It seems many protective services were not delivered in covid-19 era which may produce undesirable and detrimental effects at mass level in coming future.

OBJECTIVES
Domestic abuse, also known as domestic violence or the intimate partner violence, is de ned as the pattern of behaviour in any relationship which is used to gain power and over control an intimate partner.
This abuse may be physical, sexual, emotional, economical or psychological activities or threats of activities that can in uence another person. These include any kind of behaviour that can cause frightening, intimidating, terrorizing, manipulating, hurting, humiliating, blaming, injuring, or wounding someone. Domestic abuse is also a kind of violence that can happen to anyone of any race, age, sexual orientation, religion, or gender. This can occur within a range of relationships including couples who are married, living together or dating. Domestic violence can affects people of all socioeconomic backgrounds and education levels [1].
The main aim of this research study is to nd out Impact of SARS-CoV-2/Covid-19 Pandemic on violence against women in India across different states and union territories from the beginning of pandemic due to covid-19 i.e. January2020. Although the WHO has announced covid-19 pandemic on 11 March 2020, India has reported rst case in January 2020 and from that time several restrictions and directives came into action one by one resulting in stress and chaos all around continuing till date [5]. The women and children are considered a special vulnerable group and the globe is also witnessing a decline in several necessary health services needed especially for women and child protection [6,7,8,9,10,11] Data from January2018 to December 2021 is taken for the research study in order to have a comparative analysis of two years of pandemic era i.e. 2020 and 2021 from pre-pandemic two years i.e. 2018, 2019.

Materials And Methodology
The national commission for women (NCW) in India have launched an Ad campaign from the beginning of the lockdown in March 2020. The lockdown was announced on 24 th march 2020 for 21 days. Various Ads through electronic as well as social media were instituted to know about the women's who have suffered any kind of violence to come forward and report to concerned department and authorities in several ways. The press information bureau  Table 1 category includes protection of women against domestic violence received from March 2020 till 20 th September 2020. Table 2 includes total complaints registered / received by NCW related to crime against women as well as deprivation of their rights since March 2020 till 20 th September 2020. Also see table 3 & gure 1. Table 4,5,6,7, includes data  on various violence against women in India from 2018-2019-2020-2021 respectively whereas table -8 shows comparison of these violence for different years. Figure The data is collected from accredited and reliable sources of National commission for women, India as well as various other sources listed in this research study. This is a retrospective cross-sectional continuous observational qualitative and quantitative as well as comparative study. The month-wise and state-wise data indicating number of complaints registered with National Commission for Women in India(NCW) under two different categories in two different table 1 & 2 will be discussed and displayed.
This period of study is from March 2020 to 20 th september2020. The data is compared to previous year 2019 data. Another study period is from January-2018 to December-2021.
The data is also shown in tabulated as well as graphical form for ease of understanding. All the data obtained were analysed using Microsoft o ce software. The analysis report is presented as graphs and also in letters. See table 1

Discussion
India should have various strategies to ensure safety of women in such pandemic like situations. It seems that present laws and regulations are insu cient to give the desired results. The barriers of legal and protective system and delivery of helpful services etc. constraints should be recti ed added with a proper dynamic plan to carry on usual women protection services even in pandemics and natural disasters. India needs to develop an exclusive plan to tackle such situations such as establishment of separate cadre of worker for women protection services. India is having a very huge population of women's vulnerable to different kinds of violence so the Government must give top priority in making India a safe place for women's. The women's who are illiterate must not have access to all these reporting system as well as women from poor economical background added with remote village areas with less communication mechanisms. Lockdowns imposition during the COVID-19 pandemic have social and economic impacts have increased the exposure of women to abusive partners and known risk factors, while limiting their access to services [14]. Lockdown induced situations of humanitarian crises and displacement can increase existing violence, such as by intimate partners, as well as other-partner sexual violence, and may also lead to novel forms of violence against women.
The World Health Organization have published that over one-fourth of women between age 15-49 years have been in a relationship and subjected to physical and/or sexual violence by their intimate partner at least once in their lifetime (since age 15). The World Health Organization also found that prevalence estimates of lifetime intimate partner violence range from 20% in the Western Paci c, 22% in HIC (highincome countries and Europe) and 25% in the WHO Regions of the Americas to 33% in the WHO African region, 31% in the WHO Eastern Mediterranean region, and 33% in the WHO South-East Asia region. The WHO found that worldwide as many as 38% of women murders are committed by intimate partners, in addition to this partner violence, worldwide 6% of women report having been sexually harassed-assaulted by someone other than a partner, although data for non-partner sexual violence are more limited. Intimate partner and sexual violence are mostly found to be perpetrated by men against women [1]. The domestic violence has much impact on mental health status of women and children's. The lockdown and pandemic era have developed a sense of fear among the women's. The fear can lead to self harm such as suicide etc. and added to this there is loss of income which has many serious socio-economic impacts resulting in a vicious cycle nally leading to mental health issues.

Conclusion
India needs to develop an exclusive plan to tackle such situations such as establishment of separate cadre of worker for women protection services. India is having a very huge population of women's vulnerable to different kinds of violence so the Government must give top priority in making India a safe place for women's. The domestic violence have a serious impact on mental health of women's and their children especially in pandemic and lockdown situations in which its quite di cult to get help and relief. India should have various strategies to ensure safety of women and their mental health issues in such pandemic like situations. It seems that present laws and regulations are insu cient to give the desired results. The barriers of legal and protective system and delivery of helpful services etc. constraints should be recti ed added with a proper dynamic plan to carry on usual women protection services even in pandemics and natural disasters.
Establishment of exclusive special women protection cell in disaster like pandemic situations at central level as well as at all the states and union territories of India.
Covid-19 pandemic has given us a lesson that we must have gender equity in society& women's who are considered most vulnerable in situations of distress must have adequate supportive protection all the times especially during pandemics and other natural calamities. Women constitute a large portion of population and the country and state must have a separate department to ensure the protection to this vulnerable section of the population.
India being the second most populous country in the world should have a robust women protection strategy to operate in any situations.
The serious issue of mental health as well as socio-economic impacts of violence and lockdown should be properly taken care in pandemic like situation to protect especially vulnerable women's as well as their children's.
Declarations -This version of paper has not been previously published and is not currently under consideration by another journal. The document is Microsoft word with English (United States) language & 7701 words Total.
-Ethics approval and consent to participate: Not applicable. This study has not involved any human or animals in real or for experiments. The data on the COVID-19 pandemic were taken from the Health Department available as electronic patient records from HMIS (health management information system) of MoHFW (ministry of health and family welfare), Government of India.
-Consent for publication: The authors provide consent for publication to anyone for increasing and sharing knowledge to people who need it.
-Availability of data and materials: Electronic patient records from HMIS (health management information system) of MoHFW (ministry of health and family welfare), Government of India.
-Con icts of Interest/ Competing Interest: There are no con icts / competing of interest -Funding-Self sponsored. No aid taken from individual or agency etc.  Comparison of violence against women in India shows that covid-19 era has increased violence against women in India

Supplementary Files
This is a list of supplementary les associated with this preprint. Click to download. Data.docx