Dear Hetal,
Even Supreme Court of India has delivered judgment and laid down principles and has held that there is abuse of provision of Section 498-A. It has further been laid that in the event the girl has lodged complaint u/s 498-A and the allegations are disproved, she can be sued for malacious prosection.
IPC Section 498A and DP Act consider the accused as guilty until proven innocent, and under these laws, the accused are punished even before investigation or trial.
The criminal justice system, which has been thoroughly “sensitized” by radical feminists, is jeopardizing the life and liberty of everyone in the accused husband’s family (including minor children, pregnant sisters and senior citizens) just to satisfy the greed and ego of one ‘woman’ – the wife/daughter-in-law.
These laws violate a citizen’s basic right to life and liberty, right to due process, and right to be presumed innocent until proven guilty.
The DP Act came into effect 48 years ago, and yet women’s rights activists claim that the problem of dowry is only getting worse every day.
Basing their claim on the rising number of dowry cases, they constantly urge the Government to introduce more stringent provisions against the husband and his family.
The current DP Act is sufficient to contain the dowry menace if it is implemented in its true spirit i.e. penalizing BOTH dowry givers AND dowry takers.
To date, not a single woman or her family has been punished for either “giving dowry” or “admitting to giving dowry”, whereas scores of husbands and their relatives have been arrested upon mere allegations every day.
Once a case if filed under IPC Section 498A and DP Act, the marriage invariably ends in divorce.
Section 498A and DP Act have not only converted marriage into a crime, but also serve as weapons that break marriages and destroy families.
Section 498A and DP Act are two examples which illustrate the success of the radical feminist campaign of hatred against men and disdain for the family.
Hot on the heels of the Malimath Committee, the judgment of the Delhi High Court on 19 May 2003 in the case of Savitri Devi v. Ramesh Chand and others (104 [2003] Delhi Law Times 824) also honed in on the issue of “misuse.” Delivered by the Hon’ble Justice J.D. Kapoor (who is also author of the book Laws and Flaws in Marriage: How to Remain Happily Married, Konark Publishers, Delhi: 2002), the judgment discusses section 498A extensively. The hon’ble judge “feel(s) constrained to comment” upon it as it “hit[s] at the foundation of marriage itself and has not proved to be so good for the health of the society at large”.
Justice Kapoor prefers to focus on how section 498A results in the “social catastrophy (sic)” of thousands of divorce cases, due to arrest of members of the family and the subsequent reduction of chances of salvaging or surviving the marriage. Rather than examining the cruelty that led to such complaints, the judgment states its concern for the women involved since “remarriage is not so easy” and “women lacking in economic independence starts feeling (sic) as burden over their parents and brothers.”
The judgement repeatedly merges “misuse” of the provisions of section 498A by women complainants and misuse of the provisions by the Police. The hon’ble judge derides the police as “bad and unskilled masters” in whose “iron and heavy hands” the “ticklish and complex” issue of domestic disputes should not be left. Further, the “misuse” by women complainants is explained only as the “growing tendency” among women to rope in each and every relative in the complaint. Needless to say there is no further discussion on the elements, cases or data that constitute this “growing tendency.”
