A 38-year-old woman from Mangalsen, the district headquarters of Achham, works as a daily wage earner from dawn to dusk for her livelihood. She works menial jobs including crushing pebbles, carrying loads and working as a field hand. She works nearly double what other people generally do for survival. She has three daughters (one of whom is married), two sons and a husband.

“I work hard and earn some money to manage family expenses. But I dread going home in the evening each day,” the woman said. “My husband, under the influence of alcohol, can attack me as well as my daughters at any time.”

She said that her husband verbally abuses her and children using indecent words and beat them quite frequently.

The woman’s husband used to go to India for work in the past. But for the past year, he has been staying at home. She says that he regularly drinks alcohol and tortures the family members.

“I spend day time working outside home. I feel insecure at home. He may attack and kill me at any time,” said the woman, stating that she had to endure mental and physical torture at the hands of her husband. According to her, she lodged complaints against her husband for domestic violence with the local police several times. “But the police returned home urging us to settle the dispute at home,” she added.

Speaking to the Post, the woman said that she neither knew about the judicial committee at the local unit nor about the 16-day campaign against gender-based violence which concluded on Tuesday. “I don’t know about the 16-day activism,” she said. “Nobody informed me about it. Maybe some local women leaders attend such programmes.”

Another woman from Kamalbajar Municipality-5 shares a similar ordeal. She claimed that her husband tortures her on various pretexts. “He beats me almost every day. The mother-in-law also joins him to beat me,” said the woman, a mother of three children. “They have ordered me to leave home. Where should I go?” She added that she visited the local police post five times over the past year seeking justice but to no avail.

Several organisations and local units work together to see to the successful launch of the 16-day activism to end violence against women each year. Rallies are organised, banners unfurled and slogans are chanted. But the situation of the target group, mainly women, doesn’t appear to have changed much.

Incidents of domestic violence are unchecked in Achham, a hill district of Sudurpaschim Province. Most of the victims complain that they were subjected to torture by their alcoholic husbands.

The data at the district police office mirrors the grim picture of domestic violence in the district. As many as 129 cases of domestic violence were registered at the police over the past 28 months. A total of 107 cases were settled while only 22 cases were moved forward for legal process. Meanwhile, many cases go unreported.

“Most of the incidents of domestic violence are between husband and wife,” said a police officer preferring anonymity. “Poverty, lack of education, unemployment, patriarchal structure of the society, among others, are the main causes behind the unchecked incidents of domestic violence.” The officer said many people did not report the incident of domestic violence fearing a damage to their social prestige.

Ideally, the campaign against gender-based violence aimed at mitigating gender violence should have been able to penetrate the social fabric that perpetuates gender violence but that was not the case in Achham where Chhaupadi is still practised despite regular intervention from the authorities.