“A Female is Killed by Someone Close in Every 11 Minutes”

Every 11 minutes a woman or a girl is killed by an intimate partner or a family member, said UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres. This statement from the UN chief comes at a time when the country is shocked by the gruesome Shraddha murder case.

Secretary General Guterres gave this statement ahead of the International Day for the ‘Elimination of Violence against Women’ on November 25.

“Violence against women and girls is the most pervasive human rights violation in the world. Every 11 minutes, a woman or a girl is killed by an intimate partner or family member — and we know that other stresses, from the COVID-19 pandemic to economic turmoil, inevitably lead to even more physical and verbal abuse,” he said.

According to him, women and girls also face rampant online violence, from misogynistic hate speech to sexual harassment, image abuse, and grooming by predators.

He called for supporting public campaigns that oppose patriarchal norms and promote different forms of masculinities that reject misogyny and violence.

Murder of Shraddha Walkar by his live-in partner Aaftaab Amin Poonawala makes us feel the importance of the statement of the UN Secretary General. Shrddha was allegedly strangled to death by her live-in partner. Poonawala had chopped her body into 35 pieces. He kept the pieces in his fridge to throw them later in different parts of Delhi.