Violence against women and police reform: Notes and reflections from a symposium in India

At the initiative of one of us (Verma), our thoughts and plans crystalized into a symposium held in Gurgaon, India, in August 2014, to discuss two issues: violence against women and police reform. Both these topics had figured prominently in the recent past in India's many uninhibited and often sensationalistic media outlets. Specific cases of gender-related violence included numerous reports on the notorious "bus gang rape" in November 2012 in New Delhi (Harris, 2013a). This was coupled with perennial coverage of many instances of police brutality (Neemuchwala, 2014) and corruption along with the criminal justice system’s non-responsiveness to violence against women (Harris, 2013b)