innocent husbands and family members in jail

[Vijay Sharma]

Dear Members,

 

I would like to draw your attention towards another social menace in Indian society which every young Indian has to fight. We are all opposed to dowry. But thousands of people are  misusing dowry laws to harass husbands and his family by falsely implicating them in this law.  You can get a lot more information about this at www.498a.org ). Please be aware of gross human right violations (harassment of husband and his family by wife and her relatives) in India and in the US (of person of Indian origin) in a marriage that has gone sour. There are several IITians, REC graduates who are going through this torture. The intelligent mind which could have been used for the progress of India is getting used to prove that they innocent.

Please fill the PIL entry at: http://mynation.net/pil/pil.php

 

To know more about 498a,search the Internet for "misuse of 498a", "misuse Dowry laws" "elder abuse India", "harassed husbands".

 

Please read the article written by Lisa Tsering can be looked reached at: http://news.ncmonline.com/news/view_article.html?article_id=768649893bc5975ce97b6bff5354c210  (she won the best NCM investigative journalist award for this work).

 

   Passed by Indian Parliament in 1983, Indian Penal Code 498A, is a criminal law (not a civil law) is defined as:

"Whoever, being the husband or the relative of the husband of a woman, subjects such woman to cruelty shall be punished with imprisonment for a term which may extent to may extend to three years and shall also be liable to fine.

 

• The offence is Cognizable (arrest without investigation or warrants), non-compoundable (complaint cannot be quashed) and non-bailable (accused must appear before judge to come out of jail).
• This law requires the police to arrest all the people named in the complaint (by the wife/daughter-in-law) without any investigation and without bail. The complainant does not require any proof to file the complaint.
• Onus is on the husband and his family members to disprove the false allegations. 
• This section of law was made to curb the practice of dowry, but the reality is that the section of population which it was supposed to protect is still unable to use this law, and on the other hand girls coming from a well educated, affluent families have found a potent tool to harass in the case there is marital discord and divorce is imminent.

   The very nature of this anti-dowry law makes it wife-biased (daughter-in-law biased), discriminatory, stringent, unprecedented, exceptional and poorly formulated.

Please check out the US department of state warning to people traveling to India for marriage related issues. http://communitydispatch.com/artman/publish/article_1754.shtml

A study done by WHO has found that this is one of the ways elders are abused in India. ( http://www.who.int/ageing/projects/elder_abuse/alc_ea_ind.pdf )

 

498a can only be invoked by wife/daughter-in-law or her relative. Most cases where Sec 498A is invoked turn out to be false (as repeatedly accepted by High Courts and Supreme Court in India) as they are mere blackmail attempts by the wife (or her close relatives) when faced with a crumbling marriage. In most cases 498a complaint is followed by the demand of huge amount of money (extortion) to settle the case out of the court. There have been countless instances where, without any investigation, the police have arrested elderly parents, unmarried sisters, sister-in-laws and minor children. In these cases unsuspecting family of husband has to go through a lot of mental torture and harassment by the corrupt and sluggish Indian legal system. A typical case goes on for years (5-7 years is typical) and the conviction rate is about 2% only.

Please visit http://www.498a.org to get a complete picture of this social menace which is termed as 'legal terrorism' by the Supreme Court of India. This website has almost all the information you need to write a balanced article to expose this problem.  Please do not hesitate to reach me if I could be of any help to answer any of your questions.

 Waiting for you opinion and article in this matter.

 

Vijay Sharma

IIT Kanpur

vij...@gmail.com

 

Please visit: www.498a.org , forum.498a.org , blog.498a.org