Protect Indian Family Foundation
3, Tulsi Bhavan, S.N.Road, Mulund(W),
Mumbai-400 080, Tel: 022 25904171, 9224335577, 9869323538
Email: info@protectindianfamily.org | Web: www.protectindianfamily.org
Press Release – Women against Misuse of Women-Protection Laws
Mothers and Sisters Initiative (MASI) and All India Forgotten Women(AIFW) are organisations working towards the objectives of promoting family harmony and fighting legal terrorism (carried out through the misuse of women-protection laws). Protect Indian Family Foundation (PIF, a part of the umbrella group Save Indian Family Foundation-SIFF), is conducting this press conference in continuation of the National Events conducted by MASI and AIFW in last one month as mentioned below.
Women members of SIFF conducted a Dharna at Vidhan Shabha in Lucknow on 2nd March, 2008, conducted a Press Conference in Bangalore on 3rd March and a Press Conference and Seminar in Hyderabad on 5th March, and a Dharna in Delhi on 8th March, to highlight the consequences of women's empowerment gone awry. Through these events, we would like to bring to light the plight of the "forgotten women", who have actually been dis-empowered and whose basic human rights are being violated by the police and judiciary in the name of women's rights, protection and empowerment. We seek to highlight the woes of thousands of mothers and sisters who have been ignored and written off by organizations claiming to work for women's welfare.
We stand for Protection of Women, but against misuse of Women protection laws.
Over the last 60 years many policies have been instituted in the country in the name of women's liberation and empowerment. Special laws have been passed specifically in the name of women's protection such as IPC Section 498A (law against marital cruelty and dowry harassment) and Domestic Violence Law. Unfortunately, there are no safeguards to prevent misuse of these protective provisions.
These "women-protection laws", which are in essence wife-protection laws, assume that wives are always honest victims and would never jeopardize their own family life by making false claims of abuse. The draconian law, IPC Section 498A, in particular, allows the arrest of the husband and his male and female relatives, irrespective of their age, martial status or even health condition, solely on the basis of allegations of a wife, without any evidence or investigation.
Owing to this blind assumption and due to the absence of inherent checks and balances to prevent misuse of the laws, many innocent mothers-in-law, sisters-in-law and other female relatives of husbands are arrested and harassed through long-drawn legal proceedings that last several years.
Several authorities have noted that in close to 98% of cases filed under Section 498A, the accusations are false and that the complaints were only filed with ulterior motives.
Nevertheless, minor girls, pregnant women, married and unmarried sisters, ailing mothers and even aged grandmothers have been sent behind bars and prosecuted based on mere allegations. Young mothers are either torn away from their children or imprisoned along with them leaving indelible scars on the minds of the mothers and the children.
Many mothers and sisters are heart-broken to see their sons and brothers lose their youth, their health, their jobs, all their earnings, and sometimes even their lives, as they are mercilessly tortured by their estranged wives, aided by lawyers, police and the judiciary. Some women have ended their lives unable to bear the humiliation of being accused and arrested, and the trauma of making endless trips around the courts.
l Noted activist Madhu Kishwar acknowledged that IPC Section 498A is heavily misused, and that a significant proportion of individuals who approach "Manushi" these days are mothers-in-law and husbands who are falsely accused.
l Renowned IPS officer Kiran Bedi admitted that many poor and illiterate mothers-in-law and sisters-in-law, who are falsely charged under IPC Section 498A are languishing in prison every year.
l The Supreme Court of India has labelled the misuse of IPC Section 498A as "legal terrorism".
l The Delhi High Court recently stated that IPC Section 498A is the most abused provision.
l The World Health Organization, in its report on India clearly cited Section 498A as one of the major reasons for the "Increasing Abuse of the Elderly in India".
l Recently, the National Human Rights Commission noted that the Tihar jail is overflowing with people falsely accused under dowry cases.
l A look at the crime records shows that every 20 minutes an innocent woman is arrested under IPC Section 498A.
In addition to penalizing innocent women, a large backlog of false cases in our highly corrupt and inefficient legal system prevents genuine victims of abuse from obtaining justice. Through IPC Section 498A the police and the legal fraternity are protecting those women who indulge in perjury, blackmail, extortion and harassment of their husbands and in-laws.
Despite having such compelling evidence that more harm than good is being done to women through IPC Section 498A, none of the leading women's organizations, law makers nor the Ministry for Women and Child Welfare have taken any measures to arrest misuse of this law.
All the warnings, requests, recommendations and demands from several quarters to amend IPC Section 498A have fallen on deaf ears. Even before fixing the flaws in IPC Section 498A the Domestic Violence Law was introduced in 2006 with similar loopholes and without public discussion. Misuse of the Domestic Violence law began very soon after its introduction, and under its provisions a number of elderly mothers-in-law have been thrown out of their own homes by their daughters-in-law..
It is customary for women's organizations to trivialize the extent of misuse of these laws by women and to exaggerate statistics of dowry harassment, dowry death and domestic abuse. It is also customary for women's rights activists to deny domestic abuse against our fathers, brothers and sons. However, recent data from the National Crime Bureau indicates that nearly twice as many married men, compared to married women, commit suicide every year, unable to withstand verbal, emotional, economic and physical abuse and legal harassment. While every death of a young married woman is converted into a case of dowry death leading to immediate arrest of the husband and in-laws, large-scale suicides of men do not cause any outrage in the society.
Is the pain of a mother who lost a son to domestic abuse or legal terrorism any less than that of a mother who lost a daughter? How many more mothers and sisters should lose their sons and brothers before measures are taken to alleviate their sufferings? .
It is often assumed that only men get victimized in false dowry cases. This is not true. The reality is that an innocent woman is arrested in every 20 minutes. The real victims of dowry harassment seldom go to police and it's the innocents who get jailed. Every year 30,000 innocent women get jailed without evidence or investigation in dowry cases, ie. A woman every 20 minutes(Source NCRB).
Aren't mothers and sisters women? Don't they deserve a life of dignity and respect?
Does penalizing innocent mothers and sisters under false cases bring justice to genuinely abused women?
Does women's empowerment mean destroying family harmony and creating a fatherless society?
Is protection of women's rights synonymous with gross violation of basic human rights?
Is legal terrorism the solution to all women's problems?
These are the questions we ask the public, women's organizations, police, legal fraternity, bureaucrats and politicians in our Press Conference on the 2nd of April 2008.
Our specific demands to the government on this day are:
- Police involvement in counselling should be banned.
Marriage is not a crime and marital disputes are not crimes either. Where there is no evidence of physical harm or threat to life or limb, the police should not be allowed to arrest anyone. The police should not be allowed to randomly summon a husband and his family members to the police station in the name of counseling or questioning in case of marital disputes.
- Section 498A of IPC should be made bailable.
Section 498A, being non-bailable, allows punishing the accused by imprisonment even before guilt is established. This goes against the Universal Declaration of Human Rights which states that everyone charged with a penal offence has the right to be presumed innocent until proved guilty according to law. Abused women need protection, but placing unconditional faith in the statements of a woman and confining the accused husband and his family in police or judicial custody, until bail is granted by a court, is not the way to accord protection to women.
- Section 498A of IPC should be made non-cognizable.
Innocent citizens are being arrested everyday based on mere complaints without requiring evidence or investigation. Even children and senior citizens are not being spared. IPC 498A, being a cognizable offence, violates a citizen's right to due process.
- IPC 498A and Domestic Violence Law should be made gender neutral.
Domestic abuse is not gender specific. The assumption that victims of physical, verbal, emotional, sexual, and financial abuse are always women is wrong. According the Universal Declaration of Human Rights "all are equal before the law, and are entitled without any discrimination to equal protection of the law". Hence, our fathers, brothers, sons and husbands should also be accorded protection from physical, verbal, emotional, sexual, and financial abuse by women.
- Persons who misuse IPC 498A and Domestic Violence Law should be penalized.
Misuse of the process of law not only costs the public exchequer dearly, but also destroys the personal lives of many innocent citizens. Misuse of law should be treated as a serious crime, and persons who use women-protection laws as weapons for settling personal scores in marital disputes should be severely punished.
Save Indian Family(SIF) is a strong team of dedicated families comprising of victims of "misuse of 498a", including NRIs, Senior citizens who campaign and create awareness about gross injustice and abuse that happen in Indian Legal system. Protect Indian Family is one of the NGO members in SIF, based in Mumbai. SIF has over 20 NGOs and 50,000 individuals as its members across the globe.
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Thanks
Protect Indian Family (www.protectindianfamily.org)
9869323538 (M.R.Gupta), 9821414336 (P.R.Gokul) , 9224335577(Vikram Ahuja)
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