Open Letter to the Law Commission of India for amendment of Sect by
Tall Male on May 14, 2011 08:09 PM | Hide replies | Hide message
To Dr. Brahm A. Agrawal, Member Secretary LAW COMMISSION OF INDIA, 2nd Floor, The Indian Law Institute Building (Opp. to Supreme Court), Bhagwandas Road, New Delhi - 110 001.
Sub: Open Letter to the Law Commission of India about amendment of Section 498A
Respected Sir,
I would like to highlight certain perspectives about Section 498A which are very essential and crucial to be brought forth before we talk about any change in it.
Legal Perspective
Section 498A of the Indian Penal Code is a non-bailable, cognizable and non-compoundable offense introduced in the year 1983. As your paper already contains the definition and explanation of the same from the Government’s point of view, I am not going to elaborate on the same. Rather I am going to highlight the legal aspects of this section which have probably and unfortunately been overlooked by the Government, either during its formulation and/or its implementation.
Section 498A is an inter-gender and intra-gender biased piece of legislation having its own set in-built assumptions and presumptions. It starts with the onset that this law has been enacted to prevent “Cruelties against married women by their husbands and his relatives”. This assumption that only a “young wife” could be subjected to cruelty in marriage and only at the hands of husbands and relatives is a very dangerous one because it puts all husbands and all wives into a meme called
Re: Open Letter to the Law Commission of India for amendment of S
by Tall Male on May 14, 2011 08:09 PM
Has the Government of India ever conducted any study to validate the above assumption? Has the Government of India ever spent any amount of effort/budget to evaluate the nature of problems that occur in a marriage from a gender neutral perspective? Has the Government of India ever conducted single study about the problems faced by Indian men in general and Indian Husbands in particular? Has the Government of India ever allocated a single rupee towards the welfare of men in India? Is the Government of India aware of the fact that large scales of suicides are committed by men in India especially by married and separated men? If the answer to any of the above questions is not positive, than on what basis has the Government of India enacted a special anti-male and draconian provision to penalize innocent men and their families merely at the behest of an uninvestigated complaint fueled by stereotypical and perverted social mindsets?
That being said, in wake of the reality that the Indian Penal Code is already well-equipped with provisions to deal with crimes like murder, attempt to murder, abetment to suicide, culpable homicide not amounting to murder, blackmail, threatening, physical abuse, kidnapping, extortion, robbery, etc. etc. in a completely gender neutral manner, the introduction of Section 498A, that merely provides the facility of “Arrest on Demand” sans evidence, is a clear gender bias displayed by the Govt. of India against husbands.
Re: Re: Open Letter to the Law Commission of India for amendment
by Tall Male on May 14, 2011 08:10 PM
Social Perspective
Is the Government of India, by way of introduction of Section 498A and its reluctance to sanitize the law, trying to drive home the fact that until and unless women are provided with a law that does not question them and punishes men blindly, justice cannot be served to them?
The statements issued by the ministry of Women and Child Development Ministry about how Section 498A helps women negotiate in bad marriages clearly enunciates the real hidden agenda behind rallying for such laws. The so-called women’s rights activists do want a law which can be used as a tool to treat the husband as a FREE ATM MACHINE when the marriage does not work, or otherwise.
However, it is sad and unfortunate that the misandrists are allowed to have their way by way of state aided machinery aka the notorious Section 498A. Holding a man and his family under the imminent fear of arrest, blackmailing him into conceding before the demands of the wife, under the tool of fear created by a wrong law, is nothing short of “Legal Terrorism” as aptly pointed out by the Honorable Supreme Court of India.
Such state sponsored legal terrorism leads to disastrous social consequences by creating fringe groups who see no meaning in leading their lives as is corroborated by the suicide statistics mentioned in the next section.
Re: Re: Re: Open Letter to the Law Commission of India for amendm
by Tall Male on May 14, 2011 08:11 PM
The statement by the Women and Child Development Ministry that women go to the police station as a last resort is again a misleading gimmick as there have been innumerable instances brought to light either via media or via court judgments, wherein women have filed 498A for the flimsiest or silliest grounds, even for the husband incapable of buying a perfume worth Rs. 5000. When women can file false criminal cases leveling allegations as serious as attempt to murder and dowry harassment that can completely ruin the life of a man and his family whereas the truth is something else, there can absolutely be no reason to live under the assumption that a woman goes to a police station as a last resort and allow legal terrorism against husbands to continue unabated under Section 498A.
Section 498A is a legal means of criminalizing the institution of marriage and holds the husband as criminal whereas the marriage might have failed for any reason. It blindly assumes the statements given by the complainant wife as “GOSPEL TRUTH” and puts the burden of proof on the accused which is against the cardinal principles of natural justice and also violates the principle of Human Rights as prescribed by the Amnesty International which says that no individual is to be presumed “Guilty Until Proven Innocent”, however, Section 498A does exactly the same.
Re: Re: Re: Re: Open Letter to the Law Commission of India for am
by Tall Male on May 14, 2011 08:12 PM
Psychological Perspective
As we have seen above some of the very dangerous aspects of Section 498A legally and socially, it is pertinent to mention here that the notorious and draconian Section 498A has some serious negative psychological impact on the individuals on whom it is targeted especially husbands as is clearly evident from the suicide figures as published by the National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) – a unit of the Union Home Ministry
A brief glance about the figures:
2005: 52483 married men vs. 28188 married women
2006: 55452 married men vs. 29869 married women
2007: 57593 married men vs. 30064 married women
2008: 57639 married men vs. 30224 married women
2009: 58192 married men vs. 31300 married women
Also as per the suicide figures, the rate of suicide is highest and growing amongst married/separated men – a clear indication of the dangers that the institution of marriage brings for men and the expectations that it brings along from them. Yet, the Govt. of India is not ready to recognize this abuse of men.
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Open Letter to the Law Commission of India fo
by Tall Male on May 14, 2011 08:12 PM
There have been numerous instances wherein; a mere mention (not even a direct threat) of Section 498A or its related terms like arrest, dowry case, etc. have led to either men resorting to commit suicide or kill their wives with the former being on a much higher scale and a few sporadic instances of husbands killing their wives being reported and the root cause of murder was a threat of a case under Section 498A like Amit Buddhiraja and Satheesh Gupta of Infosys – both of whom killed their wives after being threatened with a false case of Section 498A. Amit Buddhiraja committed suicide himself as well.
This is just the tip of iceberg but if the abuse of men and their families continues unabated, it will only lead to rise in suicide by husbands and spousal violence, which will be fueled by unconstitutional laws like Section 498A and promulgated by the inaction of the Govt. of India on the same.
Some other famous cases of husband-victimization under Section 498A:
February 2008: Young Pushkar Singh from Lucknow commits suicide unable to bear the torture from his wife and Section 498A. August 13, 2009: Young Shubhankar Katyayan ends his life hounded by a greedy and cruel wife and meted out injustice by the insensitive legal system that instead of hearing to his plea subjected him to the threats of Section 498A.
Re: Re: what this
by Tall Male on May 14, 2011 08:14 PM
You should over-look the typos and look at what he is saying. Women are subversive in their ways and men are too dumb to see through their ways. That is the reason why women get all the sympathy in the world and in a fight between a man and a woman, the woman gets all support despite her being wrong. Where is the equality?
