DOMESTIC VIOLENCE DURING FIRST AND SECOND WAVE OF COVID IN SRINAGAR

Violence against women and girls is a human rights violation. Domestic abuse, also called domestic violence or intimate partner violence, can be defined as a pattern of behaviour in any relationship that is used to gain or maintain power and control over an intimate partner. Domestic violence affects people of all socioeconomic backgrounds and education levels. Study design: cross-sectional study design. Research tool: semi structured pre-tested questionnaire. Sample size was calculated based on recent study on domestic violence which showed an increase of 5% during pandemic. Sampling technique was convenient purposive sampling. We had 92 participants. Out of which 42 were married women. Around 31 were of the age group 31-40. About 16 out of 92 said they have experienced domestic violence. Out of 16, 6 had experienced abuse during Covid while 10 said it started before Covid. All of the 16 women had confided about this to someone. 10 of them had never seeked for help, 6 who had seeked for help had received some kind of assistance.