The Centre’s demonetisation move led to an increase in domestic violence rates, a Madhya Pradesh-based NGO has claimed. After Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced on November 8 that Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 notes will no longer be legal tender, complaints of domestic violence went up in the following weeks, officials from a crisis centre run by Action Aid, said, according to a report in The Indian Express on Tuesday.

The NGO’s report says men realised that their wives had been saving money without their knowledge and this led to violence, “Husbands threatened their wives, beat them and warned them of consequences like jail terms because they felt a loss of control over their wives,’’ said Sarika Sinha, regional director of Action Aid. The centre is run in collaboration with the Public Health and Family Welfare department of the Madhya Pradesh government.

The NGO helpline got 1,200 distress calls in November, against the 500 or so calls it receives every month. The NGO records state that 230 such callers required counselling, and of them 50% had faced violence at the hands of their husbands because of a money-related dispute after demonetisation.

A coordinator at the centre, Shivani Saini, said a 27-year-old woman was asked to leave her home with her seven-year-old child on November 9 after her husband found out that she had saved up Rs 4,500. “The victim and her husband were provided counselling. He heard us out but is yet to change his mind. She is still at her mother’s place. The husband used to harass her before, too, but never went to the extent of throwing her out,’’ Saini told the newspaper. She said that in several cases, the husbands harassed the wives and took away the saved money from them. They were also often threatened with jail time for saving money “illegally”.

Saini said her NGO spent days counseling women and spreading awareness about demonetisation. “It took nearly 40-45 days for things to normalise and for cases of physical violence to come down,” she said.