This week's killing of 34-year-old Tara 'Gee­ta' Ram­sa­roop and her 14-month-old ba­by Ja­da Mooti­lal was not the first case of a woman dy­ing af­ter seek­ing the pro­tec­tion of the State against an abu­sive part­ner.

But, giv­en the preva­lence of do­mes­tic abuse mat­ters which have end­ed in the killings of women, this news­pa­per hopes it is the last time.

Ram­sa­roop's rel­a­tive told Guardian Me­dia the vic­tim made sev­er­al re­ports against the sus­pect at her neigh­bour­hood po­lice sta­tion. They al­so say she had ob­tained a pro­tec­tion or­der from the po­lice, which, in the­o­ry, is sup­posed to pro­hib­it one per­son from en­gag­ing in abu­sive be­hav­iour of any form against an­oth­er per­son. The po­lice have con­firmed a pro­tec­tion or­der was served on the sus­pect.

As with many of these cas­es, there are claims from neigh­bours and rel­a­tives that the po­lice did not treat the com­plaints of the on­go­ing abuse with the se­ri­ous­ness they de­served.

While the po­lice have counter-ar­gued that they fol­lowed the pro­to­col, their fail­ure to act de­ci­sive­ly against these abuse claims comes out of a ma­lign and in­sid­i­ous as­pect of our na­tion­al cul­ture: the ten­den­cy of peo­ple to feel that they must not in­volve them­selves in 'man and woman' busi­ness. This at­ti­tude, like all oth­er neg­a­tive cul­tur­al habits, will take time to re­verse and will re­quire much work from cra­dle to grave.

Get­ting po­lice of­fi­cers in sta­tions across the coun­try to re­spond pos­i­tive­ly to do­mes­tic vi­o­lence al­le­ga­tions re­quires lead­er­ship from the po­lice high com­mand. Start­ing with Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice Er­la Hare­wood Christo­pher, de­ci­sive ac­tion must be tak­en to elim­i­nate the lack­adaisi­cal and dis­mis­sive at­ti­tude of some po­lice of­fi­cers when deal­ing with do­mes­tic abuse re­ports.

It needs to be in­stilled in all po­lice of­fi­cers that a com­plainant walk­ing in­to a po­lice sta­tion to re­port a case of abuse is re­port­ing a crime.

First­ly, the en­vi­ron­ment in the sta­tion must not be hos­tile. Al­so, the re­port must be doc­u­ment­ed in the same way that all oth­er re­ports of crime are; ap­pro­pri­ate no­ta­tions must be made, re­ceipts pro­vid­ed to vic­tims and of­fi­cers as­signed to fol­low up ini­tial re­ports.

The po­lice must al­so vig­or­ous­ly en­force pro­tec­tion or­ders is­sued by the court. The fact that the po­lice can ad­mit a pro­tec­tion or­der was served on the sus­pect on Sun­day, but the vic­tim was killed on Tues­day, in­di­cates a se­ri­ous break­down in the sys­tem.

An en­quiry by the po­lice in­to the Bar­rack­pore sta­tion's han­dling of the com­plaints as well as the en­force­ment of pro­tec­tion or­ders is re­quired.

One oth­er as­pect of this mat­ter re­quires ac­tion from the Gov­ern­ment.

In May, High Court judge Robin Mo­hammed up­held a con­sti­tu­tion­al claim by the moth­er of a mur­dered do­mes­tic abuse vic­tim, who suc­cess­ful­ly ar­gued that sev­er­al of her daugh­ter's fun­da­men­tal hu­man rights, en­shrined in T&T's Re­pub­li­can Con­sti­tu­tion, were in­fringed by the acts and/or omis­sions of the State and its ser­vants and agents. These were her daugh­ter's right to life and the rights of the vic­tim's moth­er and her child to re­spect for their fam­i­ly life.

This judg­ment has the po­ten­tial to re­sult in the State be­ing held li­able for a wide range of mis­deeds by its ser­vants and agents, which could re­sult in ru­inous dam­ages be­ing levied by the court. The ram­i­fi­ca­tions of Jus­tice Mo­hammed's judg­ment must not be ig­nored. Gov­ern­ment, there­fore, must seek to get the TTPS to im­prove its polic­ing of do­mes­tic abuse mat­ters.