Dear editor,
I, Uma Challa, President, All India Forgotten Women, am compelled to write this letter in response to the article entitled “The real victim” by T.K. Rajalakshmi.
The article is replete with misrepresented facts and misleading
statements. To top it all, the author ends the article by saying, “the
campaigns against the misuse of the law has to have some substantive
basis, but at least for now, there does not seem to be any.”
Such irresponsible statements can only be made due to utter ignorance
or ulterior motives. I present below, important facts that explain why
MEN AND WOMEN are fighting against weapons of legal terrorism like IPC
Section 498A (refer to the picture of Save Indian Family Foundation
protest published in the article).
Indian “women-protection laws”, which are in essence wife-protection
laws, assume that wives are always honest victims and therefore
require no proof of their claims before initiating action against the
accused. The draconian law, IPC Section 498A, in particular, allows
arrest of the husband and his relatives solely on the basis of the
complaint of a wife, without any proof or investigation. Further, the
accused are assumed to be guilty until proven innocent.
Added to these blind assumptions, lack of punishment or penalty for
misuse of the law has made IPC Section 498A a dangerous weapon in the
hands of unscrupulous wives to harass husbands along with elders and
women in the matrimonial home. Consequently, every five minutes an
innocent person is arrested under IPC Section 498A. Several sources
indicate that 98% of cases under IPC Section 498A are filed only to
settle personal scores when there is martial discord.
Every year 30,000 innocent women are arrested (i.e. one innocent woman
every 20 minutes) under IPC Section 498A. Everyday, minor girls,
pregnant women, married and unmarried sisters, ailing mothers and even
aged grandmothers are being sent behind bars and prosecuted based on
mere allegations. Unmarried women have ended their lives unable to
bear the humiliation of being arrested and rejected by prospective
alliances. Lives of married women are adversely affected as well due
to the unbearable stress caused by false prosecution for 7-10 years.
Every year, close to 4,000 innocent senior citizens are arrested (i.e.
one innocent elderly person every 2.5 hours) under IPC Section 498A.
Many retired elders have been ill-treated, thrown out of their own
homes and deprived of their meagre means of sustenance by greedy or
vengeful daughters-in-law. Senior citizens are further harassed
through false cases of domestic abuse and dowry harassment and denied
mental peace during the last leg of their lives. Aged parents have to
helplessly watch their sons 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 advocates, the
Police and the Judiciary. More and more elderly parents are unable to
depend on their sons for the fear of false dowry harassment cases by
resentful daughters-in-law. It is not surprising that the World Health
Organization, in its report on India cited IPC Section 498A as one of
the major reasons for the “Increasing Abuse of the Elderly in India”.
Children are not being spared from the suffering either. Irrespective
of the reasons for marital discord, wives are filing criminal cases of
domestic abuse and dowry harassment to deny children access to their
fathers, causing great pain to the fathers and children. Children are
also being arrested under false charges of dowry harassment, and
imprisoned along with older family members. In other cases, children
are being torn apart from their parents who are hauled away by the
police in front of their eyes, causing indelible scars and fears in
their young minds.
Falsely accused men have to fight the highly corrupt state machinery
on behalf of the women, children and the elderly in their families, at
their own personal expense, all the while carrying the presumption of
guilt on their heads. Many young men lose their employment either
because they are forced to appear in court frequently, or they must
often travel to a different city or state to fight their cases, or
because they are unable to focus on their professions while fighting
the cases.
Where would these men gather the strength and the resources needed to
fight the corruption and public prosecution effectively? If the
accused men are already indigent and cannot afford the best defense
money can buy, their fate is sealed. Many men who are threatened or
accused under false cases end their lives like Abdul Rahim of
Karimnagar, Rajesh Hasmukh Desai of Ahmedabad or Pushkar Singh of
Lucknow. In some cases, they end up taking the lives of their spouses
before ending their own lives as was seen in the more recent case of
Amit Budhiraj.
It is clear that the so-called “women-protection laws” are only
destroying families and creating havoc in the society. It is these
sufferings of men, women and children that form the basis for our
campaign against draconian laws like IPC Section 498A. However,
radical feminists, from organizations like AIDWA and NCW, behave like
the proverbial ostrich, keep churning out false statistics and spread
lies, paranoia and alarmism to justify the existence of the
organizations and to attract international funding to sponsor legal
terrorism.
Radical feminists are desperately trying to draw attention away from
the reasonable amendments that organizations like All India Forgotten
Women recommend in the interest of justice, fairness and true gender
equality.
By publishing biased articles like “The real victim”, Frontline is
doing huge disservice to the society. It would behoove Frontline to
publish an unbiased article correcting the misrepresented facts and
misleading statements in the article authored by T.K. Rajalakshmi.
Thank you.
Uma Challa
President
All India Forgotten Women
