An NGO fighting for the men's rights has welcomed the supreme court order to end automatic arrests of men and their kin under section 498-A of IPC and anti-dowry law and has sought merger of the said section with the Domestic Violence Act, to create a single law.
The apex court in its recent order directed the police and magistrate to stop automatic arrests in such cases and also recommended departmental action against police and judicial officers who violate its directive.
"Amendments to this much-misused law were long overdue. Lakhs of innocent people have suffered in last two decades due to this law about which the supreme court had warned of legal terrorism in 2005. The SIFF has hoped that this directive, if properly implemented, may put a brake to skyrocketing suicide rate of married men. About 64,048 married men committed suicide in 2013," Central India president of the Save Indian Family Foundation (SIFF), Rajesh Vakharia said in a release here today.
"In case of section 498-A, the term cruelty towards a woman was never defined in the first place. So a mere argument between a mother and her daughter-in-law was equated as an attempt to murder. The section presumes that the complainant woman's life is in grave danger without any basis or evidence.
"The court directive is just a temporary fix, which may very well fail," the release said, adding that a thorough amendment to the section is needed by merging it with Domestic Violence Act to create one single law.
Vakharia said that a permanent solution lies in the government consulting the law commissions, eminent jurists, NGOs and civil society to merge the country's two domestic violence laws, i.E. Section 498-A and Protection of Women from Domestic Violence Act (PWDVA).
"A new bill has to be introduced and passed in Parliament. SIFF wants that the section 498-A of IPC and the Domestic Violence Act must be amended and merged into a single law," he said, adding that the lower courts must not use threat of arrests under section 498-A as a tool for negotiating high alimony for wife.
"Alimony has to be decided by competent family courts," the release added.
