Following are the draft of the proposed amendment to the IPC-498a, Domestic Violence Bill and Remormative Modern Equality Constitutional Amendment Bill

Following are few good resources to help you with your understanding of legal procedure. Please buy a copy of

1. Indian Penal Code, by Justice K.D.Gaur

2. Hindu Law, Jhaabwala

3. Indian Evidence Act, Jhaabwaala guide.

4. Constitutional law, Jhaabwaala guide

5. Bare Texts of

a. Hindu Marriage Act.
b. Indian Divorce Act.
c. Protection of Women from Domestic Violence Act.
d. Criminal Procedure Code.
e. Civil Procedure Code.

You should get all of the above books under Rs. 1500/- in law book house. These are beginner's text-books.

You should also get Law of marriage and divorce 4th edition 2002, Author Paras Diwan for details on divorce procedures and intricacies involved.

In case if dowry cases are filed then buy Paras Diwan Law Relating to Dowry, Dowry Deaths, Bride Burning, Rape, etc. 1997 Rs 340/- which will give you minor details explained through case-laws etc. and Please do not forget books are strict guides for judges. Judges have substantial discretionary powers.

A lot of decisions are made based on facial expressions and perception of the undertrials and the decisions are still within perfect legal boundaries.

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Men's legal torture: A Study

[ 26/12/2005 ]

It is a common perception( through the media hype about women’s torture and anti-patriarchal propaganda) that only men are the torturer and women are victims, which is also quite evident from the average physical strength of the duo. The legal torture of men is not an issue of physical strength or abusive behavior of one party, it is an issue of a legal system, which is designed to do injustice and hand-over powerful tools of torture in the hands of one-section of the society. The system is indeed eradicating evils from society but at the same time there is such a huge proportion of innocent individuals who are ground in the system, which is crumbling the not so bad patriarchy as it is portrayed through media. Such a nazist legal system created by feminist groups is making feminism synonymous to Nazism in India.

The feminazis in India is well recognized by International media and other countries and is disgust to the national pride. US Travel Department has already issued warning to its citizens against marrying Indian women. The warning is as follows
“A number of U.S.-citizen men who have come to India to marry Indian nationals have been arrested and charged with crimes related to dowry extraction. Many of the charges stem from the U.S. citizen's inability to provide an immigrant visa for his prospective spouse to travel immediately to the United States. The courts sometimes order the U.S. citizen to pay large sums of money to his spouse in exchange for the dismissal of charges. The courts normally confiscate the American’s passport, and he must remain in India until the case has been settled.“ (http://travel.state.gov/travel/cis_pa_tw/cis/cis_1139.html)

The WHO report says that daughter-in-laws routinely abuse elders using the stringent anti-dowry laws.
D) Legal and financial abuse
“Legal abuse was named as a particular type of abuse in both India and Lebanon, although each country has its own specific version of this. The Indian expression of legal abuse is through abuse of the dowry laws by daughters-in-law:”
“In India, there is a law that is intended to protect daughters-in-law from abusive in-laws. A daughter-in-law can go to the police station and lay a complaint that she is being abused by her in-laws, and the in-laws are arrested on her word alone. However, the focus group participants reported that some daughters-in-law are using this law as a form of elder abuse, by making false police reports. In general, participants stressed that the lack of a caring attitude by daughters-in-law was a major problem. (India)”.
(Document no. WHO/NMH/VIP/02.1, WHO/NMH/NPH/02.2 Title Missing Voices)

UK Home office reports that there are substantial number of men who are subject to domestic violence at home.(http://www.homeoffice.gov.uk/rds/pdfs04/hors276.pdf)
“The results from this survey reveal that inter-personal violence is widespread, affecting approximately one third of the population at some time in their lives. One in twenty women has experienced serious sexual assault, while one in five women and one in ten men have been victims of domestic violence. The levels of sexual assaults and other violence reported here will make for disturbing reading. No society can be complacent in the face of evidence of such widespread experience of violence, assault and harassment.”

Moreover the Supreme Court has recognized that the Dowry Act and Domestic Violence Act is a legal terrorism, which many unscrupulous women use to threaten to mend the husband and his family, using the draconian provisions. (Sushil Kumar Sharma vs Union of India Writ petition no. 141 of 2005).

The torture to men comes from the draconian provisions and presumptions of Indian law against the natural principles of justice, in pursuit of quick questionable justice to woman, with the predisposition against husband and his family. The definitions of act constituting crime in matrimonial matters are extremely vague and the procedures are attempts to make justice before court’s verdict. For example, S498a where a woman has only caused minor hurt to “a man” is a bailable offence, but if man causes the same hurt to a woman who happens to be “a wife”, it is a non-bailable offence. Thus the legal position is that a man causing the hurt to a wife is liable to be imprisoned immediately, but a wife committing the same has to undergo trial and is free in society. Thus man is punished before the Court’s verdict. The definition of S498a makes mental and physical cruelty punishable. But being in husband’s family, the woman is anguished by myriad reasons. High amount of tension among family members against the wife, many times results in filing S498a, which immediately leads to arrest of all the family members. Most of such family members are well educated and have never experienced criminal prosecution. The Indian Law also allows for dismissal of a person, who is imprisoned for more than 24 hours. Such arrests invariably lead to loss of job among family members of husband. The husband is under excruciating pressure and embarrassment, because of the first time imprisonment in life and seeing his close relative jailed and lose jobs. It puts him in the lifetime shameful position in front of his family members. All this is done at the behest of a new bride. It is not at all necessary that the actual crime has ever been committed for all this to happen according to Indian Legal Procedures.

Surprisingly all the criminal provisions in laws relating to women are non-bailable crimes. Crimes, which are of extremely serious nature, are only supposed to be made non-bailable and cognizable and non-compoundable. But every draft of women’s laws makes each crime non-bailable, so that man can be held under terror of being imprisoned. e.g. a man against whom restraining orders are obtained by wife for resisting her wife from working, is liable to be imprisoned only on the complaint of woman. The domestic violence law goes further one step, in allowing the conviction of the man only on wife’s testimony. A man who is caught with an unscrupulous wife, which is more often than not the case, is doomed for life. He constantly lives under terror in house as his liberty financial, social and physical is completely at the behest of a woman.

There is another component of presumptions in Indian law. The example is dowry death. A man whose wife is dead under unnatural circumstances within first 7 years of marriage is presumed to have murdered her, if there is cruelty mentioned by the wife soon before the death. The law allows for unimaginable injustice. A man who might has lived happily and only because of some tiff the woman complains about her husband and then someday she is found dead. It is not uncommon to find such situation. There are always suicides and there will be more suicides. But how can a man be presumed to be a murderer and forced into murder trial. Even if the man is acquitted after being found innocent the scars of being forced into murder trial are heinous enough to not let him live in the society again and the precious years during his young life are already lost, which no feminist scraps can recompense for.

Most of the 498a cases result in payment of high amount of alimony to woman and withdrawal of the cases. Because the woman is not interested in jailing her husband as there is hardly anything that can be achieved from it and husband is already enough frustrated by the imprisonment, dealing with police and long-drawn trial, in which his parents and younger siblings are also implicated. The husband wants to get out of the trouble by hook or crook. The example of the trauma can be witnessed in Crime against women cell, where men are regularly threatened and made to mend their ways. A day’s anonymous visit in such cell will easily show many men, elders and younger ones being abused by legal machinery at the behest of women.

Maintenance is another such form of injustice. Maintenance is payable to woman, without prejudice to who is at fault in the matrimonial tiff. Indian law has created provision for livelihood of women at the expense of other person. The alimony is also supposed to be paid according to the status of the man. A woman is supposed to be part of the work force, and need not be pampered like a child for whole life. Instead the law has created provision for free lavish life for women, encouraging the women to live at the expense of man. The law means that the richer the man you marry the better will be the alimony. Instead the alimony should be granted considering the amount required for woman to stand on her own feet again, lead a secure life and cover any damages to her earning capacity also considering the behavior of the woman and the devotion of the woman to the family life and the same relief must be also available to man. There is absolutely no need for making a man part with his hard earned property. The form of alimony law allowed for women should only be allowed for children. Marriage is not license to be parasite on man for woman.

The stringency of laws is so severe that it absolutely blocks any access to wife by husband, as he fears cases fabricated against him, which will immediately lead to his and his family’s arrest. The presumptions are also such that once the wife has left home, the husband fears that untimely death of the wife will land him in a murder trial and moreover union with the wife, will result in more legal torture. In such a legal system created by Indian government, divorce is usually the best solution for him, despite the short-term jail and severe financial loss as it is at least a short time torture, instead of continuous life-long one.

The opportunities to grab property are increasingly luring women, to seek divorce, which is made even easier, by the extra-ordinarily stringent laws. Mischievous parents fall for the huge benefit with little disgrace now associated with divorce. A man under divorce proceeding is thrown out of his own house, made to part with his past earnings, made incapable of retaining any money he earns in future, has to see his parents and siblings fall in jail, driven away from his children and moreover ridiculed and berated by society and feminazis say “HE” is the torturer!

What surprises me is that the Indian Constitution does not allow for criminal prosecution of one gender against another. The article 15(3) of constitution reads as
15(3) Nothing in this article shall prevent the state from making any special provision for women and children.
Must be read with article (44)
(44) The State shall endeavor to secure for the citizens a uniform “civil” code throughout the territory of India.
Article 44 maintains that discrimination is allowed in the drafted laws by the parliament, in “civil laws”, to give social, economical and political advantage on the criterion mentioned in sub-articles of article 15.
All crimes including rape, sexual assault, cruelty and domestic violence can be committed by women. The criminal tendencies of feminine gender will be quite clear, by looking at the no. of cases registered against females which is staggering 151675 in year 2003(Courtesy NCRB Table 12.4). There is no wonder that so many men are crying about legal torture in India.

In UK and USA, a man is treated equal in front of law. A man can be a victim of sexual assault or rape. He may also obtain restraining orders against his wife for domestic violence. Although the laws relating to maintenance are equally discriminating though and men have always been afraid of that. A strange phenomenon among British and American citizenry is worth learning a lesson from. The marriage rate is sharply declining among UK’s youngsters. ( http://www.guardian.co.uk/britain/article/0,2763,1435403,00.html ) The reason is legal complications of marriage are unbearable for most of the men. With more and more intrusion of stringent laws into today’s happy homes, in favor of women against men, government is surely leading India into doom’s valley. This is a blunder politician’s are committing by not learning from the history of other nations.

I have always known feminists as home-breakers and my grand parents have always hated these concepts and strongly contemned them. Yet my father and grandfather took good care of my mother, myself and my sister and all the boys and girls in my family are well educated. I don’t see any fault in the patriarchal system, unless you must find one using Domestic Violence Act! But we are a content and happy family. Please do not enter into our home. We don’t want government with feminist scraps in our house. Give us more rational laws, which will bring only the perpetrators to justice and will strengthen the existing family system and will respect the honor and dignity of men. DO NOT implicate innocent men in criminal laws in the name of social reforms.