Sunday 22 November 2015

An Open letter to Indiatimes on a knee jerk reaction!


Dear Indiatimes 
( because at least you dared to raise issues faced by men even if for a short time),


What just happened Indiatimes? Why this always happens that whether in society or in the court room or whenever there is any argument involving a man and a woman. A woman cries or shouts something at the top of her voice and lo and behold, the issues concerning men are swept under the carpet, all sympathy goes towards the woman and prejudice against the man starts!!

Let's check out your pointers once again with relevant information...

1. “According to IPC 497, A man can be jailed for adultery, a woman can never.”

Section 497 states 

“Adultery.—Whoever has sexual intercourse with a person who is and whom he knows or has reason to believe to be the wife of another man, without the consent or connivance of that man, such sexual intercourse not amounting to the offence of rape, is guilty of the offence of adultery, and shall be punished with imprisonment of either description for a term which may extend to five years, or with fine, or with both. In such case the wife shall not be punishable as an abettor.”

I would like to ask here, where is it mentioned about any husband or wife being tried for adultery? The point clearly states that under this section, only A MAN can be jailed but a woman can never be punished !! What made you feel guilty Indiatimes?? Please don't be, because the highest judicial authority has the same observation...


http://www.thehindu.com/news/national/women-cant-be-prosecuted-for-adultery-supreme-court/article2687318.ece


2. “98% of the cases field under IPC 498A (Dowry Law) are false.”


For the people with deep knowledge of law and some feminists who support the misuse of this draconian law, I agree that 498A is a law to address cruelty by husband and his family. But most "husband's" family or any common man who does not have knowledge about such laws will call it as "The Dowry Law". Nothing wrong in using common man's language when you write for them, isn't it??


Secondly, may be the figure mentioned (98%) is a bit higher, but if one looks at the National Crime Record Bureau figures, every year at an average for all cases disposed off, around 87% cases result into acquittals. This means there is no evidence of any cruelty found in such cases. But, even though one gets acquittal, the endless sufferings faced by the man and his family is irreversible. 

Many lose their jobs, get badly beaten by Police officials, face jail, their earnings are lost( court fees + lawyer fees ), lose their old parents ( humiliation faced by society due to these false cases ) and yes! many resort to suicide unable to take it any more!! But, does anyone care?? No, is it because he is a man in so called patriarchal society with "Male Privilege" and thus deserves it??

Even Supreme court of India went ahead to call the misuse of this IPC section as "Legal Terrorism" calling for police to follow Section 41A of CrPC and get nod from magistrate before arresting anyone under this section. 


http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/No-arrests-under-anti-dowry-law-without-magistrates-nod-SC/articleshow/37661519.cms

And I do not think Supreme court will call a law as draconian for just 6% misuse. There lies more to it than that.
In Supreme court's own words for criminal case 1277 of 2014 ( Arnesh Kumar vs State of Bihar judgement).


But, still we have seen illegal arrests being made on mere verbal accusation of a woman to harass husbands and their families. And yes, such families also have women: A mother, a sister, etc who are not considered a woman by feminists and society and people who write posts to demean men.


Many women resort to file additional non bailable offences on male members (section 354 in general for molestation of women) of the family to ensure arrests are made and harassment is done to such an extent that the husband's family bows down under pressure.


Another point to be noted is, in case of theft, murder, kidnapping, dacoity, etc either something is clearly stolen or a dead body is found or a person goes missing, etc. But, in the case of 498A, without any such obvious incident, just on mere words of a woman cases are filed on husband and his family. Thus, comparing 498A with other IPC sections is not justified.


3. “Every Nine Minutes a Married Man is Committing Suicide in India.”


Lets go deeper into the suicide statistics to understand men's suicides. We will use NCRB data for 2013 as our reference.




Figure 1.




Figure 2.


Figure 3.

  • As per Figure 2,Suicide of men (90453) more than double the number of suicides by women (44256). Why? Society pressure, unfair laws, ungrateful society? The list is big.
  • The world suicide figure as per WHO report is 8 lakhs and out of that Indian men account for 90000, a staggering 11.25%!! Still no support system for men and no studies done to find out the cause. On the contrary when someone dares to list out articles on men's issues, some people start negative criticism leading to demeaning of men's issues!!
  • If we look at the figure 3, we can clearly see that till the age of 14, men's and women's suicide stats are similar and very less. As the age progresses the figure for men's suicide increases and the difference between men's and women's suicide widens astronomically! Analysis tells us that this is due to tremendous increase in responsibility and pressure on men but zero support system for men in this society. And biased laws adds fuel to the fire.
  • As per figure 3, Illness is the reason for 17530 men committing suicide in the year against 8896 women. This clearly tells us that men are more likely to commit suicide on falling ill. Major reasons of such illness are: the inhuman conditions where mostly men work like coal mines, dusty areas, nuclear plants, etc leads to men falling terminally ill. Also, when a man falls ill, he tries to hide it, ignore it, because he knows that all the responsibility of his family is on him and he can ill afford to take leaves as even a day's leave can greatly damage the budget of the house leading his family in a mess. Thus the pressure to maintain the family along with the pain caused due to disease leads to suicide of many men.
  • Bankruptcy, Professional career problem, unemployment related suicides by men are directly related to the pressure of responsibility put by the so called patriarchal society on a man. What a male privilege to have!
  • Now, as per the same figure if we still only consider the family problems as parameter for suicides, the figure comes to 21096 for the year. Which is still a MAN committing suicide every 23 minutes due to family problems!!! I think this would still not affect your learned readers who do not feel men's suicide as any reason to bother at all.... Male privilege you see!! 

4. “98% of Domestic Violence cases registered against men are fake”

Domestic violence law is a law similar to 498A, brought in to harass men farther this time financially as well. This is more of a redundant law which actually should not have any existence. The conviction rate is even less than other cases ( mere 2%) which shows the gross misuse of this law. 
This news article of 2010 will give an idea of the conviction rates in DV cases.


Now, many of your dear readers might cry fowl and acquittal doesn't mean not guilty and blah...blah... But let us look at a recent judgement by Madras high court on misuse of DV cases. The judge's own words suggests for Gender neutral DV laws to protect men from DV by women.
"Nowadays, filing cases under the Domestic Violence Act by female members has become common. A neutral and unprejudiced law is needed to protect the genuine victims of domestic violence, irrespective of gender."

 "The notable flaw in this law is that it lends itself to such easy misuse that women will find it hard to resist the temptation to 'teach a lesson' to their male relatives and will file frivolous and false cases,"
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/madurai/Court-warns-woman-against-misuse-of-Domestic-Violence-Act/articleshow/47728443.cms

Delhi court fines woman 1 Lakh Rupees for misusing DV act.

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/Woman-fined-Rs-1-lakh-for-misusing-law-against-husband/articleshow/47735472.cms

Another good article in IBN Live on misuse of DV and 498A.

http://www.ibnlive.com/news/india/misuse-of-dowry-and-domestic-violence-act-is-a-human-rights-issue-700620.html

About NFHS, I would only like to state a few points:

  1. NFHS ever, I mean EVER and NEVER has collected data on DV against men. Ohh!! So your esteemed reader was looking for an 'unbiased' data. Good - NFHS is the place.
  2. For a loosely worded DV Act where calling you brother-in-law a 'saala' could be considered DV, your reader is talking about data. First have a biased and Anti Male law and when it is grossly misused, talk about Data which is 'biased' in totality?
  3. What's the background of 40% NFHS claim? Did your esteemed reader bother to check the background of this 40%. NO. The questionnaire of NFHS asks, "Has you Husband ever screamed at you?". If that's the question asked to each child for his parents and for every Husband about his wife, NFHS will get 100% as result. So any guesses, why NFHS left men out of survey and the reader referred to NFHS only? If you still don't get it, "Good Night"!!

5. "In India, Criminal Lawyers have a template of IPC 498(A) ready. They just change the names of family members, and a FIR is ready." 

This is a fact that such templates are available for women to file made up cases to save time and energy of such women!!

There are cases where women have asked for the child's custody in their petition where as their was no children yet from the wedlock!

Some filed molestation case on brother in law, where as the husband has no brother!!

The reason is simple, in hurry, they did not get time to remove the inapplicable statements from the already available templates.
 Anyways, we will not debate this topic further as a misuse is a misuse whether done with the help of a template or without and such unscrupulous women need to be punished...  period!

6. “According to IPC 354 any woman can send a man behind bars by a simple verbal allegation.”


The most famous ( or infamous ) and draconian law against men. Whether it is section 354A or 354A(1) or any other, A woman can on a mere statement from her ensure that an innocent man is put behind the bars.
And please! No statement whether sexually coloured or normal is even required to do so. A guy has an argument with a girl, she wants to teach him a lesson and there she is off to the police station. 

We are all well aware of the infamous Sarvjeet Singh incident in New Delhi.

Next comes to mind is the Rohtak incident where two innocent boys lost the very important opportunity to get into the Indian Army due to the so called "Brave-hearts". Again that's patriarchy for you. Male privilege they say!! 

7. 53.2% of rape cases filed against men are false.

This percentage is coming straight from the books of DCW (Delhi Commission for Women).

http://indiatoday.intoday.in/story/false-rape-cases-in-delhi-delhi-commission-of-women/1/409320.html

 We all know that the figure is much higher than that. Around 73% (NCRB data) people get acquitted in rape cases each year at an average.  This is even after feminists and other activists are hanging like swords over honourable courts putting pressure on them to anyhow increase the conviction rates in Rape cases!!
In fact, there are many erroneous judgement where innocent people are convicted and put behind bars for minimum 7 years. Their life is just spoiled in minutes!!

http://www.livelaw.in/after-17-long-years-high-court-acquits-a-man-convicted-of-rape-by-trial-court/

http://www.indiatimes.com/news/india/he-spent-7years-in-prison-for-a-crime-he-did-not-commit-now-gopal-shetye-seeks-justice-234642.html

After 2012, rape laws were made stronger. This marked a sudden increase in no of rape cases reported. Most of them turned out to be fake i.e. consensus sex made into a rape case.

Even Supreme court expressed concern.

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/edit-page/Plug-loopholes-Misuse-of-rape-laws-dilutes-the-fight-against-gender-crimes/articleshow/37477329.cms

A Delhi court even went on to say that a person accused of rape should be called "Rape case survivor" if acquitted.

http://indianexpress.com/article/cities/delhi/if-acquitted-of-rape-should-man-be-termed-rape-case-survivor-asks-court/

On the contrary, when a man is raped by a woman ( i.e. tries to have sex with a man without consent or by using force/ blackmailing) he gets no relief from the law. Irony for a so called patriarchal society and so much for male privileges. Phew!!

http://www.oneindia.com/india/new-delhi-2-women-attempt-raping-autodriver-1809212.html  

8. If a wife decides not to cook, and to eat at a restaurant the man cannot afford, he can be barred under the Domestic Violence Act for “not providing food”.

9. A man cannot prevent his wife from meeting her lover. If he does, he can be charged under the Domestic Violence Act.

These points indicate that laws like 498A and PWDVA are so vaguely written, anything and everything under the sun can be converted to a violence.

Remaining silent can be domestic violence, 

Shouting can be violence,

Name calling can be violence. 

But! only by a man on a woman. Where as if a woman even hits the man, the same is not accepted as domestic violence by our society or laws.
Why?? Because our law makers never realise that men can also be victims of DV!! There is no law to protect men. There was never ever a need felt to capture data regarding DV on men as I stated earlier. When such a survey was done in UK, it was found that 40% victims of DV are men! But here NFHS never bothered to have one! Another example of male privilege for you!

http://www.theguardian.com/society/2010/sep/05/men-victims-domestic-violence

Even the women helpline in India get sizable calls from men who find nowhere to go.

http://www.thehindubusinessline.com/news/national/women-helpline-in-bhopal-getting-calls-from-men/article4396769.ece

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/life-style/relationships/man-woman/Womens-helpline-how-can-we-help-you-sir/articleshow/45823993.cms

DCW chief had to finally accept that Men are also victims of domestic violence and something needs to be done about it too!!

http://indiatoday.intoday.in/story/harassed-hubbies-dial-delhi-womens-helpline/1/507130.html

Thus we can clearly see the message, follow whatever your wife/Girlfriend says whether right or wrong or else face one of these draconian laws!!

Other than this, I would like to make mention of the IPC section 304B, where if a married woman dies with in 7 years of marriage, the husband is automatically termed guilty and remains guilty till he proves otherwise. Where as, if a husband dies, there is no such act to make a wife guilty. 

It is unfathomable why criticising unscrupulous and biased laws becomes slandering all women. No one said all women bad, but it is important that the ones that are bad be criticised and punished to stop farther wrong.. This is the only way we have equality... Period!!

Thanks,
On behalf of Men.