What do you expect you can thank Feminazi terrorists for this, they need to come up with more Female centric criminal laws like 498a that should help finish off Criminal justise system all together.
Family and Matrimonial Laws should never be a Criminal matter, this is entirely an Indian way of dealing with simple matters, just complicate them.
Aug 18, 2010
NEW DELHI: A startling revelation that hundreds of criminal trials in murder, rape, dacoity and kidnapping cases were pending for more than 20 years made the Supreme Court on Tuesday say in exasperation -- "the criminal justice system is either crumbling or has crumbled".
What added to the anguish of a Bench comprising Justices G S Singhvi and A K Ganguly was the fact that High Courts had stayed trials and, later, forgot all about the cases.
Taking Uttar Pradesh as a test case, solicitor general Gopal Subramaniam reeled out rather sad statistics reflecting poorly on the Allahabad High Court, which is administratively in charge of the subordinate judiciary.
Subramaniam said 10,541 criminal trials were stayed by Allahabad HC. Of these, 9% were pending for more than 20 years and 21% for over a decade. This means, stay of trial in 30% of heinous offences continued for more than 10 years.
The apex court has repeatedly ruled about the fundamental right of an accused to speedy trial and balanced it with judgments which coaxed trial courts to hear the loud cry of society to bring offenders to book.
In this backdrop, the Bench observed, "It's sad that administration of justice has come to such a pass. The HCs stay the trial and forget all about it. This means, we are choking the administration of justice. No one should be denied a fair and speedy trial. But what about the victims? What about society which feels that a wrongdoer should be punished at the earliest. Through these stays, that is being denied."
When the SG said that chief justices of HCs should play an active role in clearing the mess arising out decade-old stay orders on criminal trials, the Bench said, "The CJs are helpless. They have a tenure ranging from one year to even two months. What can a CJ do in such a brief tenure? They cannot deal with this problem as their brief tenures do not allow them to even understand the dynamics of a particular HC."
Taking a dig at the government and law officers, the Bench said, "Six months back, you (SG) and your colleagues had pioneered a programme for expeditious justice in the face of crores of cases pending in trial courts. But the entire system seems to have either crumbled or is crumbling. What we are witnessing through this case is that criminal justice system does not exist. What else can be said when 9% of cases have been stayed for more than 20 years. There has to be a debate and concrete solution."
The SG agreed and said there had been unexpected hindrances from hidden quarters that was slowing the programme. "The opaqueness and the power enjoyed by hidden actors is hindering it and we will not succeed unless we have loads of optimism. But we cannot just throw in the towel. Please use this case as a starting point for bringing about immediate reparatory measures. It has to be a joint operation by government and judiciary," he said.
The Bench also said there were thousands of cases filed in HCs which were never called for hearing. It asked the Allahabad HC to furnish details of such cases for passing of appropriate orders. The proceedings took place in a petition filed by Imtiaz Ahmed.
Mr.Rebates
Friday, August 20, 2010
Woman advocate gets misbehaving cops booked
Aug 19, 2010
A woman advocate forced Shaherkotda police to file a complaint against its own cops after they misbehaved with her and pushed her out of the station. She approached senior officers and the Police Control Room to force registration of the complaint.
According to the complaint filed by Bhavna Makwana, four persons, including two policemen, misbehaved with her at the police station. On Monday evening, Shaherkotda police had nabbed a person identified as Yagnik in a crime case, but he was later released by the court. Makwana handled Yagnik’s case.
The next day, when Makwana visited Shaherkotda Police Station, she was threatened by Yagnik’s opponents in the case — Amit Kanubhai and Kanu Jeenabhai — who were standing there. The duo caught her by her hand, used abusive language and threatened her with dire consequences if she did not withdraw from the case.
Two inspectors of the Saherkotda police station — B J Patel and K G Sardawa — who were present there, saw the incident. But when she went to them to complain, instead of taking any actions they started making fun of her. They even abused her and pushed her out of the police station, Makwana said.
Makwana went to narrate the case to DCP (zone III) S M Katara, who assured her of looking into the matter. Not convinced by Katara’s response, she went to JCP (sector I) Satish Sharma. Sharma too assured her that he would take necessary actions and asked her to give a written application in this matter.
Thinking that he too might take the matter lightly, Makwana called the Police Control Room which, in turn, called the Saherkotda Police Station and ordered the officer there to file a complaint against the four persons, the two policemen and the two accused, on Tuesday evening.
A woman advocate forced Shaherkotda police to file a complaint against its own cops after they misbehaved with her and pushed her out of the station. She approached senior officers and the Police Control Room to force registration of the complaint.
According to the complaint filed by Bhavna Makwana, four persons, including two policemen, misbehaved with her at the police station. On Monday evening, Shaherkotda police had nabbed a person identified as Yagnik in a crime case, but he was later released by the court. Makwana handled Yagnik’s case.
The next day, when Makwana visited Shaherkotda Police Station, she was threatened by Yagnik’s opponents in the case — Amit Kanubhai and Kanu Jeenabhai — who were standing there. The duo caught her by her hand, used abusive language and threatened her with dire consequences if she did not withdraw from the case.
Two inspectors of the Saherkotda police station — B J Patel and K G Sardawa — who were present there, saw the incident. But when she went to them to complain, instead of taking any actions they started making fun of her. They even abused her and pushed her out of the police station, Makwana said.
Makwana went to narrate the case to DCP (zone III) S M Katara, who assured her of looking into the matter. Not convinced by Katara’s response, she went to JCP (sector I) Satish Sharma. Sharma too assured her that he would take necessary actions and asked her to give a written application in this matter.
Thinking that he too might take the matter lightly, Makwana called the Police Control Room which, in turn, called the Saherkotda Police Station and ordered the officer there to file a complaint against the four persons, the two policemen and the two accused, on Tuesday evening.
Wife files domestic violence plaint against gay husband
Aug 19, 2010
A 30-year-old woman’s married life took an unexpected turn when she learned that her husband, with whom she had two children, was gay. Karishma married Salman (39) (names changed to protect their identities) on February 27, 1997 and settled in Ramtekdi.
Salman was a rickshaw driver and Karishma a housewife. But after a decade of marriage, when her husband asked her for custody of their children, she approached lawyer Supriya Kothari and filed a plaint under the relevant sections of The Protection of Women for Domestic Violence Act, 2005 before the Judicial Magistrate (First Class) A M Pathankar on August 6 and on August 23. Salman has been directed to approach the court.
Karishma has alleged in her plaint, that Salman changed his sexual preference after having two children with her. Karishma’s father spent Rs 80,000 towards the wedding expenses, cash of Rs 5,000 and one-and-half tolas of gold.
After the wedding, they had a normal married life. In 1998, she had a son name Razak (name changed to protect identity) and then in 2000 another son was born to them.
Karishma recalls, “Salman used to trouble me after marriage. He constantly demanded money and abused me many times. But I tolerated it. He was earning a decent amount by driving a rickshaw and had a part-time fish business.
Salman demanded money from my parents as he wanted to establish another business. During my second pregnancy, he insisted that I go to my parents’ house.”
She further alleged, “After three months, I returned to our house as Salman did not even see our son’s face when I was in the hospital. I came home and found Salman with a man called Danni.
Salman told me that he was a friend and was homeless. He then insisted that I go back to my parents’ house. One day, when I returned to our house, I found photos of Salman on the wall. He was wearing a saree and salwar suit.
My older son asked me whether Salman was dating someone and who the woman in the photograph was. I told him he was his father.”
“When I asked Salman about this transformation, he told me he wanted to earn fast and easy money. He also said that he would divorce me and asked me to marry another man.
I then left the house as I could not digest the fact that my husband was having sex with another man.”
Karishma continued, “I am helpless and homeless. I have studied till Class VIII and work as a domestic help. My children are grown up and I have to see to their education.
Recently, I approached him and asked him to take responsibility of being a father, by providing me with money. He then asked for custody of the children and said that he, along with his sons, would earn a good income.
I want my sons to be educated and want to keep him far away from them. When my sons are asked by their school friends what Salman does, my older son tells them he is dead as they feel ashamed of him.”
Karishma has filed a complaint before JMFC Pathankar on the grounds that she receive a share of Salman’s household, a monthly monetary maintenance of Rs 10,000 to her and her children.
In addition, she wants a compensation of Rs one lakh for injury, mental torture and emotional distress.
A 30-year-old woman’s married life took an unexpected turn when she learned that her husband, with whom she had two children, was gay. Karishma married Salman (39) (names changed to protect their identities) on February 27, 1997 and settled in Ramtekdi.
Salman was a rickshaw driver and Karishma a housewife. But after a decade of marriage, when her husband asked her for custody of their children, she approached lawyer Supriya Kothari and filed a plaint under the relevant sections of The Protection of Women for Domestic Violence Act, 2005 before the Judicial Magistrate (First Class) A M Pathankar on August 6 and on August 23. Salman has been directed to approach the court.
Karishma has alleged in her plaint, that Salman changed his sexual preference after having two children with her. Karishma’s father spent Rs 80,000 towards the wedding expenses, cash of Rs 5,000 and one-and-half tolas of gold.
After the wedding, they had a normal married life. In 1998, she had a son name Razak (name changed to protect identity) and then in 2000 another son was born to them.
Karishma recalls, “Salman used to trouble me after marriage. He constantly demanded money and abused me many times. But I tolerated it. He was earning a decent amount by driving a rickshaw and had a part-time fish business.
Salman demanded money from my parents as he wanted to establish another business. During my second pregnancy, he insisted that I go to my parents’ house.”
She further alleged, “After three months, I returned to our house as Salman did not even see our son’s face when I was in the hospital. I came home and found Salman with a man called Danni.
Salman told me that he was a friend and was homeless. He then insisted that I go back to my parents’ house. One day, when I returned to our house, I found photos of Salman on the wall. He was wearing a saree and salwar suit.
My older son asked me whether Salman was dating someone and who the woman in the photograph was. I told him he was his father.”
“When I asked Salman about this transformation, he told me he wanted to earn fast and easy money. He also said that he would divorce me and asked me to marry another man.
I then left the house as I could not digest the fact that my husband was having sex with another man.”
Karishma continued, “I am helpless and homeless. I have studied till Class VIII and work as a domestic help. My children are grown up and I have to see to their education.
Recently, I approached him and asked him to take responsibility of being a father, by providing me with money. He then asked for custody of the children and said that he, along with his sons, would earn a good income.
I want my sons to be educated and want to keep him far away from them. When my sons are asked by their school friends what Salman does, my older son tells them he is dead as they feel ashamed of him.”
Karishma has filed a complaint before JMFC Pathankar on the grounds that she receive a share of Salman’s household, a monthly monetary maintenance of Rs 10,000 to her and her children.
In addition, she wants a compensation of Rs one lakh for injury, mental torture and emotional distress.
Lok Adalat reunites couple
This guy deserves what he gets, any fool who sits in prision for 2 weeks and comes out and joins wife and her family not only ruins his life but also the lives of other innocent Men accused of False 498a. Nothing wrong if this guys wife throws slippers at this fellow daily and makes him eat dog crap.
Aug 20, 2010
BANGALORE: The Lok Adalat conducted by Bangalore Urban District Legal Service Authority turned into a marriage hall on Wednesday, as a couple who were separated over a domestic violence were reunited.
The Lok Adalat headed by City Metropolitan Magistrate (CMM) Ravindranath, convinced the couple Vadiraj (29) and Thripthi (28) to live together with their one-and-half-year-old son Ramaskanda.
The court hall turned into a mini marriage ceremony, after the couple decided to reunite and pleased judges also arranged a small programme to celebrate their ‘remarriage’. The couple’s advocate KC Gnanamurthy said, “We advocates must do this kind of service and not separate families, just to get cases.”
The mood at the Lok Adalat suddenly changed with the news and staff distributed sweets, while the couple exchanged garlands and took blessings of the CMM.
Vadiraj, who works as Assistant General Manager, in a private company married Thripthi on July 11, 2008. Soon after their marriage, Thripthi alleged harassment by her in laws and decided to go back to her parent’s house. Gnanamurthy said Thripthi was pregnant during the incident and stated that the misunderstanding between the couple was due to a trivial reason, created by their parents.
Gnanamurthy said, Thripthi filed a dowry harassment case with the Yelahanka New Town Police station on October 22, 2009 based on which Vadiraj and four of his relatives spent 14 days in jail. But the couple have finally decided to reconsider and Thripthi withdrew all the cases she had filed against Vadiraj and his family.
Aug 20, 2010
BANGALORE: The Lok Adalat conducted by Bangalore Urban District Legal Service Authority turned into a marriage hall on Wednesday, as a couple who were separated over a domestic violence were reunited.
The Lok Adalat headed by City Metropolitan Magistrate (CMM) Ravindranath, convinced the couple Vadiraj (29) and Thripthi (28) to live together with their one-and-half-year-old son Ramaskanda.
The court hall turned into a mini marriage ceremony, after the couple decided to reunite and pleased judges also arranged a small programme to celebrate their ‘remarriage’. The couple’s advocate KC Gnanamurthy said, “We advocates must do this kind of service and not separate families, just to get cases.”
The mood at the Lok Adalat suddenly changed with the news and staff distributed sweets, while the couple exchanged garlands and took blessings of the CMM.
Vadiraj, who works as Assistant General Manager, in a private company married Thripthi on July 11, 2008. Soon after their marriage, Thripthi alleged harassment by her in laws and decided to go back to her parent’s house. Gnanamurthy said Thripthi was pregnant during the incident and stated that the misunderstanding between the couple was due to a trivial reason, created by their parents.
Gnanamurthy said, Thripthi filed a dowry harassment case with the Yelahanka New Town Police station on October 22, 2009 based on which Vadiraj and four of his relatives spent 14 days in jail. But the couple have finally decided to reconsider and Thripthi withdrew all the cases she had filed against Vadiraj and his family.
(Judgement) NCW, FRRO ordered to pay compensation
Here is the Judgement.
http://lobis.nic.in/dhc/SMD/judgement/27-07-2010/SMD26072010CW101802009.pdf
Aug 1, 2010
The Delhi High Court has directed the National Commission for Women (NCW) and the Foreigners Regional Registration Office (FRRO) to pay Rs.20,000 each to a man for illegally offloading him from a Dubai-bound plane and keeping him in illegal detention at Indira Gandhi International Airport here.
Justice S. Muralidhar passed the order on a petition by the aggrieved person, Vikram Sharma, who had challenged an NCW order asking the DCP, FRRO, to issue a Look-out Circular (LoC), his illegal offloading from a plane and detention consequent to that by the FRRO.
The NCW had asked the FRRO for issuance of the LoC on a complaint by the petitioner's wife, who had accused him of subjecting her to cruelty for dowry, arguing that it had the apprehension that the petitioner might flee the country to frustrate the mediation process started by it.
The NCW had further stated that the petitioner was asked over telephone to appear before it in connection with the complaint.
Holding the issuance of the LoC illegal and without authority of law, Justice Muralidhar said that commissions and tribunals enjoy the powers of a civil court which are not authorised to pass an order for issuance of an LoC.
“Being granted the powers of a civil court for a limited purpose does not vest the NCW with the powers of a criminal court and it has no authority as of today to make a request for the issuance of an LoC,'' Justice Muralidhar said.
“This Court is, therefore, of the view that the action of the NCW in writing to the DCP, FRRO, for issuance of an LOC against the petitioner was without the authority of law. The consequent action of the FRRO in issuing such LoC which resulted in the petitioner being detained at the IGI airport was also, therefore, illegal,'' Justice Muralidhar said.
The Court asked the Union Home Ministry to issue circulars clearly stating that the request for issuance of LoCs cannot emanate from statutory bodies like the NCW.
The Court asked the Delhi Police Commissioner to order an inquiry into how the complaint of the petitioner's wife was transferred from the Crime Against Women Cell to the Anti-Extortion Cell, conclude it within two days and inform about it to the petitioner as well as the complainant within a week thereafter.
http://lobis.nic.in/dhc/SMD/judgement/27-07-2010/SMD26072010CW101802009.pdf
Aug 1, 2010
The Delhi High Court has directed the National Commission for Women (NCW) and the Foreigners Regional Registration Office (FRRO) to pay Rs.20,000 each to a man for illegally offloading him from a Dubai-bound plane and keeping him in illegal detention at Indira Gandhi International Airport here.
Justice S. Muralidhar passed the order on a petition by the aggrieved person, Vikram Sharma, who had challenged an NCW order asking the DCP, FRRO, to issue a Look-out Circular (LoC), his illegal offloading from a plane and detention consequent to that by the FRRO.
The NCW had asked the FRRO for issuance of the LoC on a complaint by the petitioner's wife, who had accused him of subjecting her to cruelty for dowry, arguing that it had the apprehension that the petitioner might flee the country to frustrate the mediation process started by it.
The NCW had further stated that the petitioner was asked over telephone to appear before it in connection with the complaint.
Holding the issuance of the LoC illegal and without authority of law, Justice Muralidhar said that commissions and tribunals enjoy the powers of a civil court which are not authorised to pass an order for issuance of an LoC.
“Being granted the powers of a civil court for a limited purpose does not vest the NCW with the powers of a criminal court and it has no authority as of today to make a request for the issuance of an LoC,'' Justice Muralidhar said.
“This Court is, therefore, of the view that the action of the NCW in writing to the DCP, FRRO, for issuance of an LOC against the petitioner was without the authority of law. The consequent action of the FRRO in issuing such LoC which resulted in the petitioner being detained at the IGI airport was also, therefore, illegal,'' Justice Muralidhar said.
The Court asked the Union Home Ministry to issue circulars clearly stating that the request for issuance of LoCs cannot emanate from statutory bodies like the NCW.
The Court asked the Delhi Police Commissioner to order an inquiry into how the complaint of the petitioner's wife was transferred from the Crime Against Women Cell to the Anti-Extortion Cell, conclude it within two days and inform about it to the petitioner as well as the complainant within a week thereafter.
Babus admit to corruption within ranks
Aug 17, 2010
NEW DELHI: Does political corruption in India take place because there are always some civil servants who are willing to collaborate in it? Or, is the lure of post-retirement assignments a major reason for spinelessness of the senior civil servants?
The affirmative answer to these questions has come from none other than bureaucrats themselves. Recently, they made these facts and many others -- usually, a subject of whisper in corridors of power -- known in as many words while participating in a first ever government-sponsored `perception' survey of civil servants.
Of the 4,808 officers (from IAS, IFS, IPS, IRS and six other top central services), an overwhelming 80% of them agreed that the "political corruption takes place because there are always some civil servants willing to collaborate in it". Since their identities were kept confidential, the respondents were candid about a number of issues.
The survey report says: "A majority of respondent felt that corrupt officers get away without being punished. It was also felt that corrupt officers are able to get the most sought after postings. Harassment of honest officials through baseless complaints and investigations also turns out to be major issue in several services."
The survey -- conducted referring to 11 major thematic areas ranging from work environment, transfers, postings, integrity to harassment and discrimination -- has found that many of the notions of bureaucrats about the civil services shattered, forcing almost an one-third of them to think about resigning from their respective services at some point of time.in their.
Pointing out to a trend where some of the successful candidates even prefer to join Indian Revenue Service (IRS) without, perhaps, understanding their job profiles, the report says: "A few officers have also expressed the view that probationers leaving other central services and joining revenue services or preferring revenue services over even the coveted IAS clearly betrays their intentions".
The survey -- carried out by the Centre for Good Governance, Hyderabad, incomjunction with ACNielsen ORG-MARG at the behest of ministry of personnel -- has come out with some interesting findings about the revenue services.
It has found that in case of services dealing with revenue collection, it is reportedly a common practice to "derail an honest assessing officer by making anonymous complaint against him".
While commenting on the plight of honest officers, few respondents said that enquiry on baseless allegations itself is a punishment; it does not matter if he or she is exonerated in the end.
"It has been pointed out that lure of post retirement assignments is a major reason for spinelessness of the senior civil servants," says the report.
Political interference in civil services has been widely cited as a major reason for the poor performance of the services. Though the survey did not cover this issue explicitly, influence of political considerations in various aspects of administration was brought out through the comments offered by a number of civil servants across the services.
Incidentally, a majority of such comments came from respondents belonging to the IAS, IPS and Indian Forest Service (IFoS).
"While respondents from the IPS expressed concern over political interference in investigations, respondents from the IFoS cited instances of being pressured by local polticians to do things not conducive to the scientific management of forests", it says.
The findings have come out with a different facet of discrimination within the bureaucracy as well. Officers remarked that discrimination is rampant based on caste, religion, region and service. Some women officers stated that there definitely is a `glass ceiling' and female officers are denied good service postings.
"Women officers are posted in development sector and not given postings in departments that deal with infrastructure, power or other such sectors," it claims.
The issue of perceived disparity between officers belonging to the IAS and other services is considered as a major cause for inter-service rivalry and demoralisation of non-IAS officers. "Most non-IAS respondents consider it unfair to perpetuate the entry-level advantage of IAS officers for the entire duration of the service spanning two to three decades," the report adds.
Most non-IAS respondents resented the hegemony of the IAS in all the senior positions in government, which gave them the authority to undertake cadre management and planning of all services.
NEW DELHI: Does political corruption in India take place because there are always some civil servants who are willing to collaborate in it? Or, is the lure of post-retirement assignments a major reason for spinelessness of the senior civil servants?
The affirmative answer to these questions has come from none other than bureaucrats themselves. Recently, they made these facts and many others -- usually, a subject of whisper in corridors of power -- known in as many words while participating in a first ever government-sponsored `perception' survey of civil servants.
Of the 4,808 officers (from IAS, IFS, IPS, IRS and six other top central services), an overwhelming 80% of them agreed that the "political corruption takes place because there are always some civil servants willing to collaborate in it". Since their identities were kept confidential, the respondents were candid about a number of issues.
The survey report says: "A majority of respondent felt that corrupt officers get away without being punished. It was also felt that corrupt officers are able to get the most sought after postings. Harassment of honest officials through baseless complaints and investigations also turns out to be major issue in several services."
The survey -- conducted referring to 11 major thematic areas ranging from work environment, transfers, postings, integrity to harassment and discrimination -- has found that many of the notions of bureaucrats about the civil services shattered, forcing almost an one-third of them to think about resigning from their respective services at some point of time.in their.
Pointing out to a trend where some of the successful candidates even prefer to join Indian Revenue Service (IRS) without, perhaps, understanding their job profiles, the report says: "A few officers have also expressed the view that probationers leaving other central services and joining revenue services or preferring revenue services over even the coveted IAS clearly betrays their intentions".
The survey -- carried out by the Centre for Good Governance, Hyderabad, incomjunction with ACNielsen ORG-MARG at the behest of ministry of personnel -- has come out with some interesting findings about the revenue services.
It has found that in case of services dealing with revenue collection, it is reportedly a common practice to "derail an honest assessing officer by making anonymous complaint against him".
While commenting on the plight of honest officers, few respondents said that enquiry on baseless allegations itself is a punishment; it does not matter if he or she is exonerated in the end.
"It has been pointed out that lure of post retirement assignments is a major reason for spinelessness of the senior civil servants," says the report.
Political interference in civil services has been widely cited as a major reason for the poor performance of the services. Though the survey did not cover this issue explicitly, influence of political considerations in various aspects of administration was brought out through the comments offered by a number of civil servants across the services.
Incidentally, a majority of such comments came from respondents belonging to the IAS, IPS and Indian Forest Service (IFoS).
"While respondents from the IPS expressed concern over political interference in investigations, respondents from the IFoS cited instances of being pressured by local polticians to do things not conducive to the scientific management of forests", it says.
The findings have come out with a different facet of discrimination within the bureaucracy as well. Officers remarked that discrimination is rampant based on caste, religion, region and service. Some women officers stated that there definitely is a `glass ceiling' and female officers are denied good service postings.
"Women officers are posted in development sector and not given postings in departments that deal with infrastructure, power or other such sectors," it claims.
The issue of perceived disparity between officers belonging to the IAS and other services is considered as a major cause for inter-service rivalry and demoralisation of non-IAS officers. "Most non-IAS respondents consider it unfair to perpetuate the entry-level advantage of IAS officers for the entire duration of the service spanning two to three decades," the report adds.
Most non-IAS respondents resented the hegemony of the IAS in all the senior positions in government, which gave them the authority to undertake cadre management and planning of all services.
IPC Section 498A: Underused or Abused?
Since I was out of Delhi and after coming back to Delhi I read the entire Article and on the basis of my own experiences, based on misuse of Dowry Laws by my daughter-in-law, I fond that article is prepared judiciously. So before reading entire article one should not make her/his opinion.
Dear Mr Choraria, My article on Section 498A warned of its misuse way back in 2000. Our feminist friends not ony refuse to listen, they are constantly demanding more stringent laws. You might want toirculate this. Madhu Kishwar
http://milapchoraria.tripod.com/msp
Laws Against Domestic Violence:
IPC Section 498A: Underused or Abused?
Madhu Kishwar
Published in Manushi Issue No: September-October, 2000
For related articles by Madhu Kishwar see www.manushi-india.in
The birth of MANUSHI in 1978 coincided with the unfortunate rise in reported cases of domestic violence and murder. Some of these appeared to be linked to dowry demands. When we organised one of our first demonstrations, in early 1979, to protest against the police gang up with the murderer’s family by registering the death of the newly-married Tarvinder Kaur as a case of suicide, nearly 1500 people of the neighbourhood joined us in calling for a social boycott of the family. This protest received widespread publicity in the media. As a result, MANUSHI and other organisations who joined in that protest were flooded with cases of married women, seeking redress against abusive and violent husbands, as also parents, whose daughters had been murdered by their in-laws, seeking our help in getting justice from the police and courts. However, the experience of approaching the police and law courts turned out to be a very disappointing one for most women’s organisations.
To begin with, the police would put all manners of hurdles in even registering cases of domestic violence, even when the victims feared for their very lives. In cases where wives had been murdered, the police were found to play an active role in destroying evidence and passing off these cases as suicides or accidental deaths – simply because they had been suitably bribed. The story in the law courts was not very different. Husbands and in-laws got away with torture and even murder, because the women and their families found it difficult to “prove beyond doubt” that they were victims of violence and extortion.
From that experience many concluded that what we needed were stringent laws. By comparison, far less importance was given to figuring out ways of making our law enforcement machinery behave lawfully. But most important of all, domestic violence and abuse came to be seen as a one-way affair, largely because most of those whose cases reached women’s organisations, police stations and law courts, happened to be wives who had complained against their husbands. Our laws do not recognise the possibility of daughters-in-law maltreating old in-laws or other vulnerable members of their husband's family.
Demand for Stringent Laws
As a result of determined campaiging and lobbying by women’s organisations,significant amend-ments were made to the Indian Penal Code, the Indian Evidence Act and the Dowry Prohibition Act, with the intention of protecting wives from marital violence, abuse and extortionist dowry demands. The most notable ones are sections 304B, 406 and 498A of the Indian Penal Code, and Section 113 A of the Indian Evidence Act.
However, the actual imple-mentation of these laws has left a bitter trail of disappointment, anger and resentment in its wake, among the affected families.
On the one hand, many victims of domestic violence, as well as many women’s organisations feel that despite the existence of supposedly stringent laws, that enshrine the dual objective of helping the woman gain control over her stridhan and punishing abusive husbands and in-laws, in reality most victims fail to receive necessary relief. This is due to the unsympathetic attitude of the police, magnified by their propensity to protect the wrong doers, once they are adequately bribed.
A survey of cases, in which wives had been murdered or had committed suicide, carried out by Vimochana, a Bangalore-based women’s organi-sation, also indicates that the police and other law enforcing agencies are wilfully avoiding use of the stringent laws against domestic violence. In most cases, even where the circumstantial evidence clearly indicates that the wife was killed, the police seemed to go out of their way to convert her death into a case of suicide. In many instances, families of victims found it difficult to register an accurate F.I.R., or have the case properly investigated. There are widespread allegations that the police usually collaborate with the murderers in producing false post-mortem and forensic reports, even destroying circumstantial evidence so that the accused can easily secure acquittal (see report by Vimochana in Manushi 117).
Similarly, a study, based on police records, to evaluate the functioning of section 498A of the Indian Penal Code, conducted by a group of women activists associated with the Tata Institute of Social Sciences in Mumbai, indicated that 40 per cent of women were dead by the time their families came to lodge complaints against their violent husbands.
Thus, numerous women continue to suffer humiliation and battering, many even to the point of death, despite the existence of stringent laws in their favour. On the other hand, there is a growing and widespread feeling that these laws are being used by most police officers and lawyers to help unscrupulous daughters-in law hold their in-laws to ransom.
The Tide Turns
In the first decade of MANUSHI’s existence, most of those who came to us for legal aid were women who alleged abuse in their marital home. In the last few years, a good proportion of the cases coming to us involve complaints by in-laws and husbands about the misuse and abuse of laws, especially sections 498A and 406. Wherever I travel, in India or abroad, such cases are invariably brought to my notice, not only by aggrieved familes and their friends, but more often by members of women’s organisations themselves.
Things have come to this pass, not just due to police and judicial corruption but also because the laws, as they are currently framed, lend themselves to easy abuse.
During the 1980’s, far reaching changes were introduced in our criminal laws to deal with domestic violence. Prior to 1983, there were no specific provisions to deal with marital abuse and violence. But husbands could be prosecuted and punished under the general provisions of the Indian Penal Code dealing with murder, abetment to suicide, causing hurt and wrongful confinement. Since marital violence mostly took place in the privacy of the home, behind closed doors, a woman could not call upon any independent witnesses to testify in her favour and prove her case “beyond reasonable doubt” as was required under criminal law. Therefore, women’s organisations lobbied to have the law tilted in women’s favour by bringing in amendments which shifted the burden of proof on the accused and instituted fairly stringent, pre-emptive measures and punishments against the accused.
All these amendments placed draconian powers in the hands of the police without adequate safeguards against the irresponsibility of the enforcement machinery. The truth is that there were adequate provisions in the IPC Sections 323, 324, 325 and 326 for use against anyone who assaults a woman or causes her injury. But the police would in most cases not register a complaint against a husband under these sections, even where there was clear evidence that the wife’s life was in grave danger. This was partly because, as habitual users of violence, policemen, more than any other section of our population, find it easy to condone beatings and even murder of wives by husbands. Given their track record in routinely brutalising people who fall into their clutches, it is reasonable to assume that the propensity of our policemen to beat up their wives would be much higher than that of the average citizen. Add to this their entrenched habit of patronising criminals as a way of garnering extra income and it would be, indeed, naive to presume that they would turn into compassionate rescuers of women in distress, simply because more stringent laws had been put at their disposal.
No new principles of accountability were added to the Police Act. The only new innovation we witnessed was that special Crimes Against Women Cells were created in select police stations to handle women’s complaints. And, in some places, Family Courts were put into operation.
However, since the new police cells for women are run by the same police personnel, barring a few exceptional officers, the rest have had no compunction in making a mockery of the new laws by systematic under use or abuse — depending upon which offers better money-making opportunities.
The New Amendments
Let us examine the new provisions to see how they facilitate this process: The Indian Penal Code was amended twice during the 1980s — first in 1983 and again in 1986 — to define special categories of crimes dealing with marital violence and abuse.
In 1983, Section 498A of the IPC defined a new cognizable offence, namely, “cruelty by husband or relatives of husband”. This means that under this law the police have no option but to take action, once such a complaint is registered by the victim or any of her relatives. It prescribes imprisonment for a term which may extend to three years and also includes a fine. The definition of cruelty is not just confined to causing grave injury, bodily harm, or danger to life, limb or physical health, but also includes mental health, harassment and emotional torture through verbal abuse. This law takes particular cognisance of harassment, where it occurs with a view to coercing the wife, or any person related to her, to meet any unlawful demand regarding any property or valuable security, or occurs on account of failure by her, or any person related to her, to meet such a demand.
During the same period, two amendments to the Dowry Prohibition Act of 1961, enacted in 1984 and 1986, made dowry giving and receiving a cognizable offence. Even in this case, where a person is prosecuted for taking or abetting dowry, or for demanding dowry, the burden of proof that he had not committed an offence was placed on the accused.
However, no punitive provisions were added for those making false allegations or exaggerated claims. There is, of course, the law against perjury (lying on oath). But in India, the courts expect people to prevaricate and lawyers routinely encourage people to make false claims because such stratagems are assumed to be part of the legal game in India. Therefore, the law against perjury has hardly ever been invoked in India.
Partners in 'Crime' Let Off
A person guilty of giving or taking dowry is punishable with imprisonment for a term ranging from six months to two years, plus a fine, or the amount of such dowry. Needless to say, no case is ever registered against dowry “givers.” It is only dowry “receivers” who are put in the dock. Not surprisingly, the law is invoked very selectively. The very same family which would declare at the time of marriage that they only gave “voluntary gifts” to the groom’s family, does not hesitate to attribute all their "gift-giving" to extortionist demands, once the marriage turns sour and is headed for a breakdown.
Section 406 prescribes imprisonment of upto three years for criminal breach of trust. This provision of IPC is supposed to be invoked by women to file cases against their husbands and in-laws for retrieval of their dowry.
Furthermore, another Section 304B was added to the IPC to deal with yet another new category of crime called “dowry death”. This section states that if the death of a woman is caused by burns or bodily injury, or occurs under abnormal circumstances, within seven years of her marriage and it is shown that just prior to her death she was subjected to cruelty by her husband or any relative of her husband, in connection with any demand for dowry, such a death would be called a “dowry death”, and the husband or relative would be deemed to have caused her death.
The person held guilty of a "dowry death" shall be punished with imprisonment for a term which shall not be less than seven years but which may extend to imprisonment for life. By inserting a new section 113B in the Indian Evidence Act, the lawmakers stipulated that in cases that get registered by the police as those of “dowry death”, the court shall presume that the accused is guilty unless he can prove otherwise.
Under section 304B, in the case of a “dowry death”, where allegations of demand of dowry or non-return of dowry are made, the accused are freqently denied anticipatory, or even regular bail.
The burden of proof is shifted to the accused party. The basic spirit of Indian jurisprudence is that a person is presumed innocent till proven guilty. However, in all such cases a person is assumed guilty till proven innocent.
This is understandable in cases of death because the unnatural demise of a woman through suicide or murder is in itself proof that something was seriously wrong in the marriage. But problems arise when the same presumption applies to cases of domestic discord where the underlying cause of conflict is not due to a husband's violence or abuse but due to the couple's inability to get along with each other.
Misuse of Section 498A
Way back in 1988, I had pointed out, in what came to be a very controversial article, that there was already a distinct trend to include dowry demands in every complaint of domestic discord or cruelty, even when dowry was not an issue at all (see MANUSHI 48). The police as well as lawyers were found to be encouraging female complainants to use this as a necessary ploy to implicate their marital families, making them believe that their complaint would not be taken seriously otherwise. With the enactment of 498 A, this tendency has received a further fillip. Mentioning dowry demands seems to have become a common ritual in virtually all cases registered with the police or filed in court.
For years after the new law had come into existence, the police would refuse to register cases under 498A unless specific allegations of dowry harassment were made. However, determined action by some women’s organisations ensured that this section came to be used in all situations of cruelty and violence — not just confined to dowry related violence. But, in places where there are no vigilant organisations taking up such cases, policemen and lawyers are often found encouraging complainants to add dowry demands as the main cause for cruelty. This has created an erroneous impression that all of the violence in Indian homes is due to a growing greed for more dowry. This makes the crime look peculiarly Indian, but the truth is that violence against wives is common to most societies, including those which have no tradition of dowry.
Often, highly exaggerated or bogus claims are made by unscrupulous families who demand the return of more than was given as stridhan, using the draconian sections 498A and section 406 of the IPC as a bargaining tool. Sometimes the goal is reasonable — the woman wants the return of all items that legitimately belong to her, but she is encouraged to overstate her case and to demand an enhanced settlement as a pre-condition for divorce by mutual consent.
A large number of cases registered under 498A are subsequently withdrawn, though not necessarily because they were false. Bombay based lawyer, Flavia Agnes, points out that the "complexities of women’s lives, particularly within a violent marriage, have to be comprehended beyond the context of popular ethics. The conviction and imprisonment of the husband may not be the best solution to the problems of a victimised wife." Her limited choices and constrained circumstances often "make it impossible for her to follow up the criminal case." As Agnes point out: "Since the section does not protect a woman’s right to the matriomonial home, or offer her shelter during the proceedings, she may have no other choice but to work out a reconciliation. At this point she would be forced to withdraw the complaint as the husband would make it a precondition for any negotiations. If she has decided to opt for a divorce and the husband is willing for a settlement and a mutual consent divorce, again withdrawing the complaint would be a precondition for such settlement."
Agnes adds: "if she wants to separate or divorce on the ground of cruelty, she would have to follow two cases — one in a civil court and the other in a criminal court. Anyone who has followed up a case in court would well understand the tremendous pressure this would exert, specially when she is at a stage of rebuilding her life, finding shelter, a job and child care facility. Under the civil law she would at least be entitled for maintenance which would be her greater priority. So if she was to choose between the two proceedings, in most cases, a woman would opt for the civil case where she would be entitled to maintenance, child custody, injunction against harassment and finally a divorce which would set her free from her violent husband." Thus, many women end up dropping the criminal proceedings. In most cases, criminal proceedings are “quashed” as a result a settlement or compromise by presenting, with mutual consent, a joint petition/ in the High Court u/s 482 Cr. P.C.
Instrument of Blackmail?
Sadly, there are also any number of cases coming to light where Section 498A has been used mainly as an instrument of blackmail. It lends itself to easy misuse as a tool for wreaking vengeance on entire families, because, under this section, it is available to the police to arrest anyone a married woman names as a tormentor in her complaint, as “cruelty" in marriage has been made a non-bailable offence. Thereafter, bail in such cases has been denied as a basic right.
Many allege that such a drastic paradigm shift has lent itself to gross abuse, because arresting and putting a person in jail, even before the trial has begun, amounts to pre-judging and punishing the accused without due process. Although a preliminary investigation is required after the registration of the F.I.R, in practice such complaints are registered, whether the charges are proved valid or not, and arrest warrants issued, without determining whether the concerned family is actually abusive, or they have been falsely implicated. For example, there are any number of cases where the problem is mutual maladjustment of the couple rather than abuse by the entire joint family. However, a host of relatives, including elderly parents, who are not necessarily the cause of maladjustment, have all been arrested and put in jail for varying lengths of time before the trial begins. Lawyers have cited several cases where judges have refused bail unless the accused family deposits a certain sum of money in the complainant’s name as a precondition to the grant of bail.
Held Guilty Without Trial
Scared by these developments, many apply for anticipatory bail at the slightest likelihood of a wife lodging a complaint with the police. I also know of several cases where the lawyer advised his client to pre-empt his wife from registering a case of cruelty against him, by filing a divorce petition before the wife could reach the police. Husbands could then reasonably argue that the charges of cruelty were a malafide retaliation against the husband’s petition for divorce. Thus, instead of finding redressal for her grievances, a woman ends up fighting a defensive divorce case.
The law was recast, heavily weighted in the woman’s favour, on the assumption that only genuinely aggrieved women would come forward to lodge complaints and that they would invariably tell the truth. In the process, however, the whole concept of due process of law had been overturned in these legal provisions dealing with domestic violence.
Police and Lawyers Mislead
During the preliminary investigations carried out by MANUSHI, several lawyers provided us with instances of the police using the threat of arrest to extort a lot of money from the husband’s family. Likewise, people allege that the police threatened to oppose or delay granting of bail unless the accused family coughed up fairly hefty amounts as bribes. Others allege that many lawyers encourage complainants to exaggerate the amounts due to them as stridhan, assuring them that they would get them a hefty settlement from the husband, provided they got a certain percentage as commission for their services in coercing the husband’s family.
Many cases have come to our notice whereby the woman uses the strict provisions of 498A in the hope of enhancing her bargaining position vis a vis her husband and in-laws. Her lawyers often encourage her in the misguided belief that her husband would be so intimidated that he will be ready to concede all her demands. However, once a family has been sent to jail even for a day, they are so paranoid that they refuse to consider a reconciliation under any circumstances, pushing instead for divorce. Thus, many a woman ends up with a divorce she didn’t want and with weaker, rather than strengthened, terms of bargaining.
Several women’s organisations, with long years of experience in intervening in such cases, find to their dismay that their help was being sought in patently bogus cases. Several police officers also admit that a good number of cases are of dubious standing.
The cases in which these provisions have been exploited cover a large spectrum. In an instance brought to our notice by the Delhi based organisation, Shaktishalini, a young woman who happened to have married into a much wealthier family than her own, used the threat of 498A to pressure her husband into giving money to her brothers for investing in their business. In yet another case, a woman wanted a divorce because she was having an affair with a doctor from whom she was also pregnant. Yet, she sought a divorce alleging cruelty at the hands of her husband and charged him with being impotent - all so that she could coerce him into giving her a sum of money. Shaktishalini also mentioned a case they had to deal with in which a wife refused to consummate her marriage because she was involved in an incestuous relationship with her own father. Yet this father-daughter duo filed a case under 498A and demanded ten lakhs from the groom’s family as a pre-condition to uncontested divorce.
I personally know of instances where the main point of discord between the couple was that the wife wanted the husband to leave his parent's home or an old widowed mother and set up a nuclear family. Since the man resisted this move, the wife used 498A as a bargaining device, without success though. In one instance, the young wife being the only daughter of a wealthy businessman, wanted her husband to move in with her parents because his income allowed middle class comforts, not the luxuries she was used to. Since he did not succumb to the pressure of leaving his parents, she got both her father and mother in-law arrested and put in jail for several days under 498A, at a time when her husband had gone visiting his sister in the US. The man himself dared not return even to come and bail out his parents, before he got an anticipatory bail from the court. Needless to say, all these cases ended in divorce rather than in the wife getting her way.
Are These Stray Cases?
The question to ask is: are these stray examples or do they represent a growing trend? Opinions differ. Some lawyers will tell you that more than 90 per cent of cases under 498A are false or are based on questionable grounds. A lawyer, who handles the cases of Sabla Sangh, told me that in Punjab, on any random day, 75 per cent of the cases listed for hearing in criminal courts are registered under section 498A, and of these more than 90 per cent are malafide. Sumitra Kant of Punjab Istri Sabha confirms that the proportion of such blackmail cases is growing fast in Punjab and cited several cases personally known to her.
Nobody has established as yet whether the abuse of these laws is as rampant as it is made out to be. Some think that the scare caused by isolated cases of misuse has caused a reaction in our society, making people exaggerate the damaging consequences of these laws. They dismiss the charges of abuse by pointing to the very low rate of convictions under 498A.
While it is true that very few people have actually been given sentences under 498A there is no doubt that a large number of families have been locked up in jail for a few days or weeks, some even for months, following the registration of a police F.I.R. That is punishment enough for most. In many instances, out-of-court settlements are made using 498A as a bargaining point by the woman’s family. Many cases do not go far because the charges are so exaggerated that the cases fall through. All these and other factors may be contributing to an abysmally low conviction rate.
However, many feminists think that Section 498A has indeed served women well and proved extremely useful as a deterrent. They argue that women man not be in a position to see their complaint through to its logical end. But this is not to deny its usefulness in bringing the husband to the negotiating table. Since the offence is non-bailable, the initial imprisionment for a day or two helps to convey to the husbands the message that their wives are not going to take the violence lying down.
No doubt, some women feel compelled to use this method, to arrive at a speedy divorce and settlement of alimony because they feel that they won’t get justice through the civil courts, given their tardy and unpredictable functioning.
But this in itself amounts to using the law as a weapon of intimidation rather than a tool of justice. I would condone its use thus, if it were true that lawyers used it judiciously to effect dignified settlements for women with legitimate complaints. But in a good number of cases, least in metropolitian cities lawyers are actively distorting the spirit and purpose of the law.
The basic problem with the present laws dealing with domestic discord and marital abuse is that instead of providing effective remedies through civil laws, the whole matter has been put under the jurisdiction of criminal laws, with very draconian provisions to make their implementation stringent.
This is what scares many women from approaching the police or the courts for protection, because once they put their husbands behind bars, they know then that they are in a fight to the finish. Most women are not prepared for that. Instead, they prefer to approach organisations that can mediate on their behalf and work out a better solution for them. In some cases, where the Crimes against Women Cell personnel are sensitive and honest to their job, they do perform the role of mediators well. But in most cases, the police make such cases an occasion to make money by squeezing the husband’s family, in return for the woman withdrawing her opposition to grant of bail.
Need For Workable Laws
One of the tragedies of independent India is that we have not yet learnt to distinguish between reasonable and unreasonable laws, between implementable and unimplementable laws, just as we have failed to create a law- enforcement machinery capable of providing genuine recourse to all those whose rights have been violated.
By a great deal of struggle and hard work, women’s organisations have won a measure of social legitimacy in persuading our society, especially lawmakers, to recognise the serious threat to women’s lives due to domestic violence. However, if instances of manipulation of such laws become common, we will get less and less sympathy for the plight of women in our society, even for those women who are facing threats to their lives. We need to sift the grain from the chaff and check out whether the allegations of abuse are indeed genuine, or they are exaggerated and altogether malafide. Those of us who are concerned about expanding the horizons of women’s freedom and strengthening their rights, both within the family and in the public domain, ought to be taking note of these developments as they arise.
--
Madhu Purnima Kishwar
Editor, Manushi Journal,
Founder, Manushi Sangathan
Dear Mr Choraria, My article on Section 498A warned of its misuse way back in 2000. Our feminist friends not ony refuse to listen, they are constantly demanding more stringent laws. You might want toirculate this. Madhu Kishwar
http://milapchoraria.tripod.com/msp
Laws Against Domestic Violence:
IPC Section 498A: Underused or Abused?
Madhu Kishwar
Published in Manushi Issue No: September-October, 2000
For related articles by Madhu Kishwar see www.manushi-india.in
The birth of MANUSHI in 1978 coincided with the unfortunate rise in reported cases of domestic violence and murder. Some of these appeared to be linked to dowry demands. When we organised one of our first demonstrations, in early 1979, to protest against the police gang up with the murderer’s family by registering the death of the newly-married Tarvinder Kaur as a case of suicide, nearly 1500 people of the neighbourhood joined us in calling for a social boycott of the family. This protest received widespread publicity in the media. As a result, MANUSHI and other organisations who joined in that protest were flooded with cases of married women, seeking redress against abusive and violent husbands, as also parents, whose daughters had been murdered by their in-laws, seeking our help in getting justice from the police and courts. However, the experience of approaching the police and law courts turned out to be a very disappointing one for most women’s organisations.
To begin with, the police would put all manners of hurdles in even registering cases of domestic violence, even when the victims feared for their very lives. In cases where wives had been murdered, the police were found to play an active role in destroying evidence and passing off these cases as suicides or accidental deaths – simply because they had been suitably bribed. The story in the law courts was not very different. Husbands and in-laws got away with torture and even murder, because the women and their families found it difficult to “prove beyond doubt” that they were victims of violence and extortion.
From that experience many concluded that what we needed were stringent laws. By comparison, far less importance was given to figuring out ways of making our law enforcement machinery behave lawfully. But most important of all, domestic violence and abuse came to be seen as a one-way affair, largely because most of those whose cases reached women’s organisations, police stations and law courts, happened to be wives who had complained against their husbands. Our laws do not recognise the possibility of daughters-in-law maltreating old in-laws or other vulnerable members of their husband's family.
Demand for Stringent Laws
As a result of determined campaiging and lobbying by women’s organisations,significant amend-ments were made to the Indian Penal Code, the Indian Evidence Act and the Dowry Prohibition Act, with the intention of protecting wives from marital violence, abuse and extortionist dowry demands. The most notable ones are sections 304B, 406 and 498A of the Indian Penal Code, and Section 113 A of the Indian Evidence Act.
However, the actual imple-mentation of these laws has left a bitter trail of disappointment, anger and resentment in its wake, among the affected families.
On the one hand, many victims of domestic violence, as well as many women’s organisations feel that despite the existence of supposedly stringent laws, that enshrine the dual objective of helping the woman gain control over her stridhan and punishing abusive husbands and in-laws, in reality most victims fail to receive necessary relief. This is due to the unsympathetic attitude of the police, magnified by their propensity to protect the wrong doers, once they are adequately bribed.
A survey of cases, in which wives had been murdered or had committed suicide, carried out by Vimochana, a Bangalore-based women’s organi-sation, also indicates that the police and other law enforcing agencies are wilfully avoiding use of the stringent laws against domestic violence. In most cases, even where the circumstantial evidence clearly indicates that the wife was killed, the police seemed to go out of their way to convert her death into a case of suicide. In many instances, families of victims found it difficult to register an accurate F.I.R., or have the case properly investigated. There are widespread allegations that the police usually collaborate with the murderers in producing false post-mortem and forensic reports, even destroying circumstantial evidence so that the accused can easily secure acquittal (see report by Vimochana in Manushi 117).
Similarly, a study, based on police records, to evaluate the functioning of section 498A of the Indian Penal Code, conducted by a group of women activists associated with the Tata Institute of Social Sciences in Mumbai, indicated that 40 per cent of women were dead by the time their families came to lodge complaints against their violent husbands.
Thus, numerous women continue to suffer humiliation and battering, many even to the point of death, despite the existence of stringent laws in their favour. On the other hand, there is a growing and widespread feeling that these laws are being used by most police officers and lawyers to help unscrupulous daughters-in law hold their in-laws to ransom.
The Tide Turns
In the first decade of MANUSHI’s existence, most of those who came to us for legal aid were women who alleged abuse in their marital home. In the last few years, a good proportion of the cases coming to us involve complaints by in-laws and husbands about the misuse and abuse of laws, especially sections 498A and 406. Wherever I travel, in India or abroad, such cases are invariably brought to my notice, not only by aggrieved familes and their friends, but more often by members of women’s organisations themselves.
Things have come to this pass, not just due to police and judicial corruption but also because the laws, as they are currently framed, lend themselves to easy abuse.
During the 1980’s, far reaching changes were introduced in our criminal laws to deal with domestic violence. Prior to 1983, there were no specific provisions to deal with marital abuse and violence. But husbands could be prosecuted and punished under the general provisions of the Indian Penal Code dealing with murder, abetment to suicide, causing hurt and wrongful confinement. Since marital violence mostly took place in the privacy of the home, behind closed doors, a woman could not call upon any independent witnesses to testify in her favour and prove her case “beyond reasonable doubt” as was required under criminal law. Therefore, women’s organisations lobbied to have the law tilted in women’s favour by bringing in amendments which shifted the burden of proof on the accused and instituted fairly stringent, pre-emptive measures and punishments against the accused.
All these amendments placed draconian powers in the hands of the police without adequate safeguards against the irresponsibility of the enforcement machinery. The truth is that there were adequate provisions in the IPC Sections 323, 324, 325 and 326 for use against anyone who assaults a woman or causes her injury. But the police would in most cases not register a complaint against a husband under these sections, even where there was clear evidence that the wife’s life was in grave danger. This was partly because, as habitual users of violence, policemen, more than any other section of our population, find it easy to condone beatings and even murder of wives by husbands. Given their track record in routinely brutalising people who fall into their clutches, it is reasonable to assume that the propensity of our policemen to beat up their wives would be much higher than that of the average citizen. Add to this their entrenched habit of patronising criminals as a way of garnering extra income and it would be, indeed, naive to presume that they would turn into compassionate rescuers of women in distress, simply because more stringent laws had been put at their disposal.
No new principles of accountability were added to the Police Act. The only new innovation we witnessed was that special Crimes Against Women Cells were created in select police stations to handle women’s complaints. And, in some places, Family Courts were put into operation.
However, since the new police cells for women are run by the same police personnel, barring a few exceptional officers, the rest have had no compunction in making a mockery of the new laws by systematic under use or abuse — depending upon which offers better money-making opportunities.
The New Amendments
Let us examine the new provisions to see how they facilitate this process: The Indian Penal Code was amended twice during the 1980s — first in 1983 and again in 1986 — to define special categories of crimes dealing with marital violence and abuse.
In 1983, Section 498A of the IPC defined a new cognizable offence, namely, “cruelty by husband or relatives of husband”. This means that under this law the police have no option but to take action, once such a complaint is registered by the victim or any of her relatives. It prescribes imprisonment for a term which may extend to three years and also includes a fine. The definition of cruelty is not just confined to causing grave injury, bodily harm, or danger to life, limb or physical health, but also includes mental health, harassment and emotional torture through verbal abuse. This law takes particular cognisance of harassment, where it occurs with a view to coercing the wife, or any person related to her, to meet any unlawful demand regarding any property or valuable security, or occurs on account of failure by her, or any person related to her, to meet such a demand.
During the same period, two amendments to the Dowry Prohibition Act of 1961, enacted in 1984 and 1986, made dowry giving and receiving a cognizable offence. Even in this case, where a person is prosecuted for taking or abetting dowry, or for demanding dowry, the burden of proof that he had not committed an offence was placed on the accused.
However, no punitive provisions were added for those making false allegations or exaggerated claims. There is, of course, the law against perjury (lying on oath). But in India, the courts expect people to prevaricate and lawyers routinely encourage people to make false claims because such stratagems are assumed to be part of the legal game in India. Therefore, the law against perjury has hardly ever been invoked in India.
Partners in 'Crime' Let Off
A person guilty of giving or taking dowry is punishable with imprisonment for a term ranging from six months to two years, plus a fine, or the amount of such dowry. Needless to say, no case is ever registered against dowry “givers.” It is only dowry “receivers” who are put in the dock. Not surprisingly, the law is invoked very selectively. The very same family which would declare at the time of marriage that they only gave “voluntary gifts” to the groom’s family, does not hesitate to attribute all their "gift-giving" to extortionist demands, once the marriage turns sour and is headed for a breakdown.
Section 406 prescribes imprisonment of upto three years for criminal breach of trust. This provision of IPC is supposed to be invoked by women to file cases against their husbands and in-laws for retrieval of their dowry.
Furthermore, another Section 304B was added to the IPC to deal with yet another new category of crime called “dowry death”. This section states that if the death of a woman is caused by burns or bodily injury, or occurs under abnormal circumstances, within seven years of her marriage and it is shown that just prior to her death she was subjected to cruelty by her husband or any relative of her husband, in connection with any demand for dowry, such a death would be called a “dowry death”, and the husband or relative would be deemed to have caused her death.
The person held guilty of a "dowry death" shall be punished with imprisonment for a term which shall not be less than seven years but which may extend to imprisonment for life. By inserting a new section 113B in the Indian Evidence Act, the lawmakers stipulated that in cases that get registered by the police as those of “dowry death”, the court shall presume that the accused is guilty unless he can prove otherwise.
Under section 304B, in the case of a “dowry death”, where allegations of demand of dowry or non-return of dowry are made, the accused are freqently denied anticipatory, or even regular bail.
The burden of proof is shifted to the accused party. The basic spirit of Indian jurisprudence is that a person is presumed innocent till proven guilty. However, in all such cases a person is assumed guilty till proven innocent.
This is understandable in cases of death because the unnatural demise of a woman through suicide or murder is in itself proof that something was seriously wrong in the marriage. But problems arise when the same presumption applies to cases of domestic discord where the underlying cause of conflict is not due to a husband's violence or abuse but due to the couple's inability to get along with each other.
Misuse of Section 498A
Way back in 1988, I had pointed out, in what came to be a very controversial article, that there was already a distinct trend to include dowry demands in every complaint of domestic discord or cruelty, even when dowry was not an issue at all (see MANUSHI 48). The police as well as lawyers were found to be encouraging female complainants to use this as a necessary ploy to implicate their marital families, making them believe that their complaint would not be taken seriously otherwise. With the enactment of 498 A, this tendency has received a further fillip. Mentioning dowry demands seems to have become a common ritual in virtually all cases registered with the police or filed in court.
For years after the new law had come into existence, the police would refuse to register cases under 498A unless specific allegations of dowry harassment were made. However, determined action by some women’s organisations ensured that this section came to be used in all situations of cruelty and violence — not just confined to dowry related violence. But, in places where there are no vigilant organisations taking up such cases, policemen and lawyers are often found encouraging complainants to add dowry demands as the main cause for cruelty. This has created an erroneous impression that all of the violence in Indian homes is due to a growing greed for more dowry. This makes the crime look peculiarly Indian, but the truth is that violence against wives is common to most societies, including those which have no tradition of dowry.
Often, highly exaggerated or bogus claims are made by unscrupulous families who demand the return of more than was given as stridhan, using the draconian sections 498A and section 406 of the IPC as a bargaining tool. Sometimes the goal is reasonable — the woman wants the return of all items that legitimately belong to her, but she is encouraged to overstate her case and to demand an enhanced settlement as a pre-condition for divorce by mutual consent.
A large number of cases registered under 498A are subsequently withdrawn, though not necessarily because they were false. Bombay based lawyer, Flavia Agnes, points out that the "complexities of women’s lives, particularly within a violent marriage, have to be comprehended beyond the context of popular ethics. The conviction and imprisonment of the husband may not be the best solution to the problems of a victimised wife." Her limited choices and constrained circumstances often "make it impossible for her to follow up the criminal case." As Agnes point out: "Since the section does not protect a woman’s right to the matriomonial home, or offer her shelter during the proceedings, she may have no other choice but to work out a reconciliation. At this point she would be forced to withdraw the complaint as the husband would make it a precondition for any negotiations. If she has decided to opt for a divorce and the husband is willing for a settlement and a mutual consent divorce, again withdrawing the complaint would be a precondition for such settlement."
Agnes adds: "if she wants to separate or divorce on the ground of cruelty, she would have to follow two cases — one in a civil court and the other in a criminal court. Anyone who has followed up a case in court would well understand the tremendous pressure this would exert, specially when she is at a stage of rebuilding her life, finding shelter, a job and child care facility. Under the civil law she would at least be entitled for maintenance which would be her greater priority. So if she was to choose between the two proceedings, in most cases, a woman would opt for the civil case where she would be entitled to maintenance, child custody, injunction against harassment and finally a divorce which would set her free from her violent husband." Thus, many women end up dropping the criminal proceedings. In most cases, criminal proceedings are “quashed” as a result a settlement or compromise by presenting, with mutual consent, a joint petition/ in the High Court u/s 482 Cr. P.C.
Instrument of Blackmail?
Sadly, there are also any number of cases coming to light where Section 498A has been used mainly as an instrument of blackmail. It lends itself to easy misuse as a tool for wreaking vengeance on entire families, because, under this section, it is available to the police to arrest anyone a married woman names as a tormentor in her complaint, as “cruelty" in marriage has been made a non-bailable offence. Thereafter, bail in such cases has been denied as a basic right.
Many allege that such a drastic paradigm shift has lent itself to gross abuse, because arresting and putting a person in jail, even before the trial has begun, amounts to pre-judging and punishing the accused without due process. Although a preliminary investigation is required after the registration of the F.I.R, in practice such complaints are registered, whether the charges are proved valid or not, and arrest warrants issued, without determining whether the concerned family is actually abusive, or they have been falsely implicated. For example, there are any number of cases where the problem is mutual maladjustment of the couple rather than abuse by the entire joint family. However, a host of relatives, including elderly parents, who are not necessarily the cause of maladjustment, have all been arrested and put in jail for varying lengths of time before the trial begins. Lawyers have cited several cases where judges have refused bail unless the accused family deposits a certain sum of money in the complainant’s name as a precondition to the grant of bail.
Held Guilty Without Trial
Scared by these developments, many apply for anticipatory bail at the slightest likelihood of a wife lodging a complaint with the police. I also know of several cases where the lawyer advised his client to pre-empt his wife from registering a case of cruelty against him, by filing a divorce petition before the wife could reach the police. Husbands could then reasonably argue that the charges of cruelty were a malafide retaliation against the husband’s petition for divorce. Thus, instead of finding redressal for her grievances, a woman ends up fighting a defensive divorce case.
The law was recast, heavily weighted in the woman’s favour, on the assumption that only genuinely aggrieved women would come forward to lodge complaints and that they would invariably tell the truth. In the process, however, the whole concept of due process of law had been overturned in these legal provisions dealing with domestic violence.
Police and Lawyers Mislead
During the preliminary investigations carried out by MANUSHI, several lawyers provided us with instances of the police using the threat of arrest to extort a lot of money from the husband’s family. Likewise, people allege that the police threatened to oppose or delay granting of bail unless the accused family coughed up fairly hefty amounts as bribes. Others allege that many lawyers encourage complainants to exaggerate the amounts due to them as stridhan, assuring them that they would get them a hefty settlement from the husband, provided they got a certain percentage as commission for their services in coercing the husband’s family.
Many cases have come to our notice whereby the woman uses the strict provisions of 498A in the hope of enhancing her bargaining position vis a vis her husband and in-laws. Her lawyers often encourage her in the misguided belief that her husband would be so intimidated that he will be ready to concede all her demands. However, once a family has been sent to jail even for a day, they are so paranoid that they refuse to consider a reconciliation under any circumstances, pushing instead for divorce. Thus, many a woman ends up with a divorce she didn’t want and with weaker, rather than strengthened, terms of bargaining.
Several women’s organisations, with long years of experience in intervening in such cases, find to their dismay that their help was being sought in patently bogus cases. Several police officers also admit that a good number of cases are of dubious standing.
The cases in which these provisions have been exploited cover a large spectrum. In an instance brought to our notice by the Delhi based organisation, Shaktishalini, a young woman who happened to have married into a much wealthier family than her own, used the threat of 498A to pressure her husband into giving money to her brothers for investing in their business. In yet another case, a woman wanted a divorce because she was having an affair with a doctor from whom she was also pregnant. Yet, she sought a divorce alleging cruelty at the hands of her husband and charged him with being impotent - all so that she could coerce him into giving her a sum of money. Shaktishalini also mentioned a case they had to deal with in which a wife refused to consummate her marriage because she was involved in an incestuous relationship with her own father. Yet this father-daughter duo filed a case under 498A and demanded ten lakhs from the groom’s family as a pre-condition to uncontested divorce.
I personally know of instances where the main point of discord between the couple was that the wife wanted the husband to leave his parent's home or an old widowed mother and set up a nuclear family. Since the man resisted this move, the wife used 498A as a bargaining device, without success though. In one instance, the young wife being the only daughter of a wealthy businessman, wanted her husband to move in with her parents because his income allowed middle class comforts, not the luxuries she was used to. Since he did not succumb to the pressure of leaving his parents, she got both her father and mother in-law arrested and put in jail for several days under 498A, at a time when her husband had gone visiting his sister in the US. The man himself dared not return even to come and bail out his parents, before he got an anticipatory bail from the court. Needless to say, all these cases ended in divorce rather than in the wife getting her way.
Are These Stray Cases?
The question to ask is: are these stray examples or do they represent a growing trend? Opinions differ. Some lawyers will tell you that more than 90 per cent of cases under 498A are false or are based on questionable grounds. A lawyer, who handles the cases of Sabla Sangh, told me that in Punjab, on any random day, 75 per cent of the cases listed for hearing in criminal courts are registered under section 498A, and of these more than 90 per cent are malafide. Sumitra Kant of Punjab Istri Sabha confirms that the proportion of such blackmail cases is growing fast in Punjab and cited several cases personally known to her.
Nobody has established as yet whether the abuse of these laws is as rampant as it is made out to be. Some think that the scare caused by isolated cases of misuse has caused a reaction in our society, making people exaggerate the damaging consequences of these laws. They dismiss the charges of abuse by pointing to the very low rate of convictions under 498A.
While it is true that very few people have actually been given sentences under 498A there is no doubt that a large number of families have been locked up in jail for a few days or weeks, some even for months, following the registration of a police F.I.R. That is punishment enough for most. In many instances, out-of-court settlements are made using 498A as a bargaining point by the woman’s family. Many cases do not go far because the charges are so exaggerated that the cases fall through. All these and other factors may be contributing to an abysmally low conviction rate.
However, many feminists think that Section 498A has indeed served women well and proved extremely useful as a deterrent. They argue that women man not be in a position to see their complaint through to its logical end. But this is not to deny its usefulness in bringing the husband to the negotiating table. Since the offence is non-bailable, the initial imprisionment for a day or two helps to convey to the husbands the message that their wives are not going to take the violence lying down.
No doubt, some women feel compelled to use this method, to arrive at a speedy divorce and settlement of alimony because they feel that they won’t get justice through the civil courts, given their tardy and unpredictable functioning.
But this in itself amounts to using the law as a weapon of intimidation rather than a tool of justice. I would condone its use thus, if it were true that lawyers used it judiciously to effect dignified settlements for women with legitimate complaints. But in a good number of cases, least in metropolitian cities lawyers are actively distorting the spirit and purpose of the law.
The basic problem with the present laws dealing with domestic discord and marital abuse is that instead of providing effective remedies through civil laws, the whole matter has been put under the jurisdiction of criminal laws, with very draconian provisions to make their implementation stringent.
This is what scares many women from approaching the police or the courts for protection, because once they put their husbands behind bars, they know then that they are in a fight to the finish. Most women are not prepared for that. Instead, they prefer to approach organisations that can mediate on their behalf and work out a better solution for them. In some cases, where the Crimes against Women Cell personnel are sensitive and honest to their job, they do perform the role of mediators well. But in most cases, the police make such cases an occasion to make money by squeezing the husband’s family, in return for the woman withdrawing her opposition to grant of bail.
Need For Workable Laws
One of the tragedies of independent India is that we have not yet learnt to distinguish between reasonable and unreasonable laws, between implementable and unimplementable laws, just as we have failed to create a law- enforcement machinery capable of providing genuine recourse to all those whose rights have been violated.
By a great deal of struggle and hard work, women’s organisations have won a measure of social legitimacy in persuading our society, especially lawmakers, to recognise the serious threat to women’s lives due to domestic violence. However, if instances of manipulation of such laws become common, we will get less and less sympathy for the plight of women in our society, even for those women who are facing threats to their lives. We need to sift the grain from the chaff and check out whether the allegations of abuse are indeed genuine, or they are exaggerated and altogether malafide. Those of us who are concerned about expanding the horizons of women’s freedom and strengthening their rights, both within the family and in the public domain, ought to be taking note of these developments as they arise.
--
Madhu Purnima Kishwar
Editor, Manushi Journal,
Founder, Manushi Sangathan
Thursday, August 19, 2010
The Obsolescence of Barack Obama
This is what happens to anyone that sits under the skirt of the Feminazi's, your ride will be short and the public will eventually kick you out with fierce opposition to your ways. President Obama is like a fizzing out Candle in less then 2 years, his inexperience is rubbing off, he is like a Democrate Donkey running for cover fast before the American public boot his party out because of his Leftist ways.
This jackass is going to rush as many leftist bills into congress as he possibly can before the November elections, and the likely hood of a strong backlash against his party at the polls.
Aug 11, 2010
The magic of 2008 can't be recreated, and good riddance to it.
Not long ago Barack Obama, for those who were spellbound by him, had the stylishness of JFK and the historic mission of FDR riding to the nation's rescue. Now it is to Lyndon B. Johnson's unhappy presidency that Democratic strategist Robert Shrum compares the stewardship of Mr. Obama. Johnson, wrote Mr. Shrum in the Week magazine last month, never "sustained an emotional link with the American people" and chose to escalate a war that "forced his abdication as president."
A broken link with the public, and a war in Afghanistan he neither embraces and sells to his party nor abandons—this is a time of puzzlement for President Obama. His fall from political grace has been as swift as his rise a handful of years ago. He had been hot political property in 2006 and, of course, in 2008. But now he will campaign for his party's 2010 candidates from afar, holding fund raisers but not hitting the campaign trail in most of the contested races. Those mass rallies of Obama frenzy are surely of the past.
The vaunted Obama economic stimulus, at $862 billion, has failed. The "progressives" want to double down, and were they to have their way, would have pushed for a bigger stimulus still. But the American people are in open rebellion against an economic strategy of public debt, higher taxes and unending deficits. We're not all Keynesians, it turns out. The panic that propelled Mr. Obama to the presidency has waned. There is deep concern, to be sure. But the Obama strategy has lost the consent of the governed.
Mr. Obama could protest that his swift and sudden fall from grace is no fault of his. He had been a blank slate, and the devotees had projected onto him their hopes and dreams. His victory had not been the triumph of policies he had enunciated in great detail. He had never run anything in his entire life. He had a scant public record, but oddly this worked to his advantage. If he was going to begin the world anew, it was better that he knew little about the machinery of government.
He pronounced on the American condition with stark, unalloyed confidence. He had little if any regard for precedents. He could be forgiven the thought that America's faith in economic freedom had given way and that he had the popular writ to move the nation toward a super-regulated command economy. An "economic emergency" was upon us, and this would be the New New Deal.
There was no hesitation in the monumental changes Mr. Obama had in mind. The logic was Jacobin, the authority deriving from a perceived mandate to recast time-honored practices. It was veritably rule by emergency decrees. If public opinion displayed no enthusiasm for the overhaul of the nation's health-care system, the administration would push on. The public would adjust in due time.
The nation may be ill at ease with an immigration reform bill that would provide some 12 million illegal immigrants a path toward citizenship, but the administration would still insist on the primacy of its own judgment. It would take Arizona to court, even though the public let it be known that it understood Arizona's immigration law as an expression of that state's frustration with the federal government's abdication of its responsibility over border security.
It was clear as daylight that there was a built-in contradiction between opening the citizenship rolls to a vast flood of new petitioners and a political economy of redistribution favored by the Obama administration. The choice was stark: You could either "spread the wealth around" or open the gates for legalizing millions of immigrants of lower skills. You could not do both.
It was canonical to this administration and its functionaries that they were handed a broken nation, that it was theirs to repair, that it was theirs to tax and reshape to their preferences. Yet there was, in 1980, after another landmark election, a leader who had stepped forth in a time of "malaise" at home and weakness abroad: Ronald Reagan. His program was different from Mr. Obama's. His faith in the country was boundless. What he sought was to restore the nation's faith in itself, in its political and economic vitality.
Big as Reagan's mandate was, in two elections, the man was never bigger than his country. There was never narcissism or a bloated sense of personal destiny in him. He gloried in the country, and drew sustenance from its heroic deeds and its capacity for recovery. No political class rode with him to power anxious to lay its hands on the nation's treasure, eager to supplant the forces of the market with its own economic preferences.
To be sure, Reagan faltered midway through his second term—the arms-for-hostages trade, the Iran-Contra affair, nearly wrecked his presidency. But he recovered, the nation rallied around him and carried him across the finish line, his bond with the electorate deep and true. He had two years left of his stewardship, and his political recovery was so miraculous that he, and his first mate, Secretary of State George P. Shultz, would seal the nation's victory in the Cold War.
There is little evidence that the Obama presidency could yet find new vindication, another lease on life. Mr. Obama will mark time, but henceforth he will not define the national agenda. He will not be the repository of its hopes and sentiments. The ambition that his would be a "transformational" presidency—he rightly described Reagan's stewardship in these terms—is for naught.
There remains the fact of his biography, a man's journey. Personality is doubtless an obstacle to his recovery. The detachment of Mr. Obama need not be dwelled upon at great length, so obvious it is now even to the pundits who had a "tingling sensation" when they beheld him during his astonishing run for office. Nor does Mr. Obama have the suppleness of Bill Clinton, who rose out of the debris of his first two years in the presidency, dusted himself off, walked away from his spouse's radical attempt to remake the country's health-delivery system, and moved to the political center.
It is in the nature of charisma that it rises out of thin air, out of need and distress, and then dissipates when the magic fails. The country has had its fill with a scapegoating that knows no end from a president who had vowed to break with recriminations and partisanship. The magic of 2008 can't be recreated, and good riddance to it. Slowly, the nation has recovered its poise. There is a widespread sense of unstated embarrassment that a political majority, if only for a moment, fell for the promise of an untested redeemer—a belief alien to the temperament of this so practical and sober a nation.
This jackass is going to rush as many leftist bills into congress as he possibly can before the November elections, and the likely hood of a strong backlash against his party at the polls.
Aug 11, 2010
The magic of 2008 can't be recreated, and good riddance to it.
Not long ago Barack Obama, for those who were spellbound by him, had the stylishness of JFK and the historic mission of FDR riding to the nation's rescue. Now it is to Lyndon B. Johnson's unhappy presidency that Democratic strategist Robert Shrum compares the stewardship of Mr. Obama. Johnson, wrote Mr. Shrum in the Week magazine last month, never "sustained an emotional link with the American people" and chose to escalate a war that "forced his abdication as president."
A broken link with the public, and a war in Afghanistan he neither embraces and sells to his party nor abandons—this is a time of puzzlement for President Obama. His fall from political grace has been as swift as his rise a handful of years ago. He had been hot political property in 2006 and, of course, in 2008. But now he will campaign for his party's 2010 candidates from afar, holding fund raisers but not hitting the campaign trail in most of the contested races. Those mass rallies of Obama frenzy are surely of the past.
The vaunted Obama economic stimulus, at $862 billion, has failed. The "progressives" want to double down, and were they to have their way, would have pushed for a bigger stimulus still. But the American people are in open rebellion against an economic strategy of public debt, higher taxes and unending deficits. We're not all Keynesians, it turns out. The panic that propelled Mr. Obama to the presidency has waned. There is deep concern, to be sure. But the Obama strategy has lost the consent of the governed.
Mr. Obama could protest that his swift and sudden fall from grace is no fault of his. He had been a blank slate, and the devotees had projected onto him their hopes and dreams. His victory had not been the triumph of policies he had enunciated in great detail. He had never run anything in his entire life. He had a scant public record, but oddly this worked to his advantage. If he was going to begin the world anew, it was better that he knew little about the machinery of government.
He pronounced on the American condition with stark, unalloyed confidence. He had little if any regard for precedents. He could be forgiven the thought that America's faith in economic freedom had given way and that he had the popular writ to move the nation toward a super-regulated command economy. An "economic emergency" was upon us, and this would be the New New Deal.
There was no hesitation in the monumental changes Mr. Obama had in mind. The logic was Jacobin, the authority deriving from a perceived mandate to recast time-honored practices. It was veritably rule by emergency decrees. If public opinion displayed no enthusiasm for the overhaul of the nation's health-care system, the administration would push on. The public would adjust in due time.
The nation may be ill at ease with an immigration reform bill that would provide some 12 million illegal immigrants a path toward citizenship, but the administration would still insist on the primacy of its own judgment. It would take Arizona to court, even though the public let it be known that it understood Arizona's immigration law as an expression of that state's frustration with the federal government's abdication of its responsibility over border security.
It was clear as daylight that there was a built-in contradiction between opening the citizenship rolls to a vast flood of new petitioners and a political economy of redistribution favored by the Obama administration. The choice was stark: You could either "spread the wealth around" or open the gates for legalizing millions of immigrants of lower skills. You could not do both.
It was canonical to this administration and its functionaries that they were handed a broken nation, that it was theirs to repair, that it was theirs to tax and reshape to their preferences. Yet there was, in 1980, after another landmark election, a leader who had stepped forth in a time of "malaise" at home and weakness abroad: Ronald Reagan. His program was different from Mr. Obama's. His faith in the country was boundless. What he sought was to restore the nation's faith in itself, in its political and economic vitality.
Big as Reagan's mandate was, in two elections, the man was never bigger than his country. There was never narcissism or a bloated sense of personal destiny in him. He gloried in the country, and drew sustenance from its heroic deeds and its capacity for recovery. No political class rode with him to power anxious to lay its hands on the nation's treasure, eager to supplant the forces of the market with its own economic preferences.
To be sure, Reagan faltered midway through his second term—the arms-for-hostages trade, the Iran-Contra affair, nearly wrecked his presidency. But he recovered, the nation rallied around him and carried him across the finish line, his bond with the electorate deep and true. He had two years left of his stewardship, and his political recovery was so miraculous that he, and his first mate, Secretary of State George P. Shultz, would seal the nation's victory in the Cold War.
There is little evidence that the Obama presidency could yet find new vindication, another lease on life. Mr. Obama will mark time, but henceforth he will not define the national agenda. He will not be the repository of its hopes and sentiments. The ambition that his would be a "transformational" presidency—he rightly described Reagan's stewardship in these terms—is for naught.
There remains the fact of his biography, a man's journey. Personality is doubtless an obstacle to his recovery. The detachment of Mr. Obama need not be dwelled upon at great length, so obvious it is now even to the pundits who had a "tingling sensation" when they beheld him during his astonishing run for office. Nor does Mr. Obama have the suppleness of Bill Clinton, who rose out of the debris of his first two years in the presidency, dusted himself off, walked away from his spouse's radical attempt to remake the country's health-delivery system, and moved to the political center.
It is in the nature of charisma that it rises out of thin air, out of need and distress, and then dissipates when the magic fails. The country has had its fill with a scapegoating that knows no end from a president who had vowed to break with recriminations and partisanship. The magic of 2008 can't be recreated, and good riddance to it. Slowly, the nation has recovered its poise. There is a widespread sense of unstated embarrassment that a political majority, if only for a moment, fell for the promise of an untested redeemer—a belief alien to the temperament of this so practical and sober a nation.
(Video's) Is Obama a feminist? 1-3
This proves Obama and his side kick, VP Joe Biden are under the Skirts of the Feminazi Groups. Watch out!
Kathy Spillar: Will Obama live up to his feminist designation on the cover of MS Magazine?
Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Kathy Spillar: Will Obama live up to his feminist designation on the cover of MS Magazine?
Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
(Video) Ugly Democrats, Stunning Republicans
Democrate (Feminist) women tend to be ugly since they are looking for ways to screw society, so are naturally ugly inside.
How come Democrat women in leadership roles lack any value in the aesthetic arena, while at the same time Republican women are rather appealing to the eyes?
-Democrats as seen starting at 1:28
Rosie O'Donnell, Susan Estrich,, Hillary Clinton, Helen Thomas, Lynn Stewart, Elena Kagan, Janet Napolitano, Madeleine Albright, Barbra Streisand, Janet Reno, Nancy Pelosi.
Republicans as seen starting at 1:42
Elisabeth Hasselbeck, Monica Crowley, Michele Bachmann, Angie Harmon, Michelle Malkin, Ann Coulter, Sarah Palin, Carrie Prejean, Janine Turner, Laura Ingraham
How come Democrat women in leadership roles lack any value in the aesthetic arena, while at the same time Republican women are rather appealing to the eyes?
-Democrats as seen starting at 1:28
Rosie O'Donnell, Susan Estrich,, Hillary Clinton, Helen Thomas, Lynn Stewart, Elena Kagan, Janet Napolitano, Madeleine Albright, Barbra Streisand, Janet Reno, Nancy Pelosi.
Republicans as seen starting at 1:42
Elisabeth Hasselbeck, Monica Crowley, Michele Bachmann, Angie Harmon, Michelle Malkin, Ann Coulter, Sarah Palin, Carrie Prejean, Janine Turner, Laura Ingraham
Republican Women vs Democrat Women
Well it is nearly Mid Term Elections time in USA, November 2010. Quit simply put, there are 2 parties in the US Republicans (Anti-Feminist), and Democrates (Feminist have them under their skirts), President Obama's Party, sad fact.
Here are some satirical political video's about some of the women on each side as presented by Republicans, Njoy!
Second
Here are some satirical political video's about some of the women on each side as presented by Republicans, Njoy!
Second
Gender Neutral Phrases
Haha, Feminst action in play, soon the word WoMen will become something else because its not gender neutral. All this polically correct nonscense is crap for people who are not informed what Feminists agenda really is.
Aug 16, 2010
Ne doesn't like tem zeeself
VIA Stan Carey's Sentence First we learn that Dennis Baron, professor of English and linguistics at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, has long been interested (some might use a stronger word) in the periodic attempts to institute gender-neutral pronouns in English, for those cases where "he or she" feels cumbersome but "they" is numerically inaccurate.
You might have heard of pronouns like "ze" and "zer" created for the purpose of discussing transgender and genderqueer identity. But according to Mr Baron's count there have been "more than 100 attempts to coin a gender-neutral pronoun over the course of more than 150 years", including heesh, hse, kin, ve, ta, tey, fm, z, ze, shem, se, j/e, jee, ey, ho, po, ae, et, heshe, hann, herm, ala, de, ghach... the list goes on.
Now, for the benefit of us web-rats, he has condensed the fruits of his research into a highly entertaining blog post, which includes clippings of newspaper articles on the need for such pronouns, going back to the mid 19th century. See, for instance, this one from The Atlantic in 1878:
We want a new pronoun. The need of a personal pronoun of the singular number and common gender is so desperate, urgent, imperative, that according to the established theories it should long since have grown on our speech, as the tails grew off the monkeys.
It's nice to see that a scant 19 years after the publication of "On the Origin of Species", Darwinism was already considered "established", whereas today America seem to be moving in the opposite direction. And yet English-speakers have resisted gender-neutral pronouns as stubbornly as the cosmopolitans of the world have resisted Esperanto.
If we continue the natural-selection metaphor, then, this suggests that if words, or indeed whole languages, have an equivalent of evolutionary fitness (an organism's capacity to get its genes into the next generation), then merely being designed to suit a certain purpose is not enough to ensure fitness. Natural selection operates incrementally, after all; new species don't appear out of the blue, but form gradually as adaptations of existing ones that already have a niche in the ecosystem. Refudiate might catch on, because it's an adaptation. Ghach... forget it. Maybe with time "he or she" could gradually turn into "hershee" and then "hersh", or "s/he" become "sehee" and then "se", but coining them from raw metal won't work.
But if they evolve gradually, they're in an evolutionary arms race with "they". And my money would be on "they". It's more of a leap to introduce new pronouns that are gender neutral than adapt an existing one to be number neutral. As Mr Baron points out, "After all, if you, which is also gender neutral, can serve both for singular and plural, why can't they do the same?"
Aug 16, 2010
Ne doesn't like tem zeeself
VIA Stan Carey's Sentence First we learn that Dennis Baron, professor of English and linguistics at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, has long been interested (some might use a stronger word) in the periodic attempts to institute gender-neutral pronouns in English, for those cases where "he or she" feels cumbersome but "they" is numerically inaccurate.
You might have heard of pronouns like "ze" and "zer" created for the purpose of discussing transgender and genderqueer identity. But according to Mr Baron's count there have been "more than 100 attempts to coin a gender-neutral pronoun over the course of more than 150 years", including heesh, hse, kin, ve, ta, tey, fm, z, ze, shem, se, j/e, jee, ey, ho, po, ae, et, heshe, hann, herm, ala, de, ghach... the list goes on.
Now, for the benefit of us web-rats, he has condensed the fruits of his research into a highly entertaining blog post, which includes clippings of newspaper articles on the need for such pronouns, going back to the mid 19th century. See, for instance, this one from The Atlantic in 1878:
We want a new pronoun. The need of a personal pronoun of the singular number and common gender is so desperate, urgent, imperative, that according to the established theories it should long since have grown on our speech, as the tails grew off the monkeys.
It's nice to see that a scant 19 years after the publication of "On the Origin of Species", Darwinism was already considered "established", whereas today America seem to be moving in the opposite direction. And yet English-speakers have resisted gender-neutral pronouns as stubbornly as the cosmopolitans of the world have resisted Esperanto.
If we continue the natural-selection metaphor, then, this suggests that if words, or indeed whole languages, have an equivalent of evolutionary fitness (an organism's capacity to get its genes into the next generation), then merely being designed to suit a certain purpose is not enough to ensure fitness. Natural selection operates incrementally, after all; new species don't appear out of the blue, but form gradually as adaptations of existing ones that already have a niche in the ecosystem. Refudiate might catch on, because it's an adaptation. Ghach... forget it. Maybe with time "he or she" could gradually turn into "hershee" and then "hersh", or "s/he" become "sehee" and then "se", but coining them from raw metal won't work.
But if they evolve gradually, they're in an evolutionary arms race with "they". And my money would be on "they". It's more of a leap to introduce new pronouns that are gender neutral than adapt an existing one to be number neutral. As Mr Baron points out, "After all, if you, which is also gender neutral, can serve both for singular and plural, why can't they do the same?"
Hindi Movie on Groom Kidnapping and Forced Marriage (2 articles in 1)
This story is based on real life events, "case is still in court, because he is still legally married." The story is based on the Directors close friend, guess no Man is spared hell.
Read the 2 related articles below, enjoy~
Aug 18, 2010
After PEEPLI LIVE, ANTARDWAND highlights rural issues
ANTARDWAND, a National Award winning film based on Groom Kidnapping, is inspired from a true story of the director Sushil Rajpal's closest friend, who still suffers from the psychological scare of being kidnapped and forcibly married to someone, he didn't intent to. Though he later escaped and presently lives in an urban city, the case is still in court, because he is still legally married.
Director Sushil Rajpal could empathize with his friend, but yet he also understood the psychological trauma, the bride must have been facing, since she too was married and yet not 'married' and 'deserted' to her fate.
Director Sushil Rajpal felt it was his moral duty and sacrificed his entire savings to bring this issue of 'Groom Kidnapping' to urban India, which had closed its eyes to rural India and the twin social evil of 'Groom Kidnapping' and related issue of 'Dowry'.
It is surprising still, because Groom Kidnapping has got a social sanction amongst the upper caste, in the northern states, especially Bihar, where potential bridegrooms who have done their IAS, Engineering etc. are targets, because the bride family can't afford the high dowry rates. It's a society where human beings are 'traded' as animals, with social sanction, wherein its 'acceptable.' It could have happened to anyone of us, if we stayed in those parts of India.
And so, as PEEPLI LIVE has brought the focus of Urban India to the issues faced in rural India, in an entertaining way, ANTARDWAND, too brings to light the social evil that plagues Rural India, in the mainstream media debate.
Says director Sushil Rajpal, "This is just one side of the larger story- what propelled the director in me was the other and more moving part of the story. Such forced marriages wreak huge emotional damage on both the girl and the boy. More for the voiceless girl who is deeply entrenched in a male dominated feudalistic society where she has nothing else to fall back on. Whether deserted or divorced -the life of a hapless girl in such a claustrophobic society becomes a hellish and endless journey. She bears the stigma of 'being married but not married'.
ANTARDWAND is slated to release next week on August 27th, 2010
July 29, 2010
Anurag Kashyap considers ANTARDWAND a gem
Anurag Kashyap's UDAAN got a stupendous response. He is becoming the face and voice of alternative good quality cinema that will take Indian cinema to the global stage. Amongst his listings of the future gems of films to be released, he considers ANTARDWAND as one of the gems to look forward to.
Anurag Kashyap wrote on his blog, "ANTARDWAND- By Sushil Rajpal.. till now a cameraman.. my senior from Hansraj, batchmate and friend of Tarsem Singh, ex- FTII has made a film. set in Bihar.. about a boy from delhi university who has appeared for his UPSC and wants to talk to his conservative dad (Vinay Pathak) about his girlfriend who is pregnant, and gets kidnapped by a man who wants him as his son-in-law.. so the boy (raja chaudhary) is tortured, but he doesn't agree to be the DAMAAD, but is still married of in a unconscious state, to the kidnappers daughter(a stunning debutant from FTII acting batch called SWATI), like it is the ptractice in many parts of that state, popularly called "jabariya shaadi".. marriage on the gunpoint.. extraordinary.. the kind of film that should be doing the rounds of the international festivals ...A masterpiece funded by friends.. who all are various partners in the film and mostly from the state.. must watch if it gets released.. a thriller , a reality check , and a point made.."
Groom abduction or 'Pakrauah Shaddi' so rampant in Bihar and Eastern UP, seemingly in the high caste Bhumihar community, to avoid another evil dowry, is touched upon in ANTARDWAND, directed by Sushil Rajpal.
The film is a peep into the reality that is mofussil India, a feudal India refusing to die-..it's a story where everybody involved pay a heavy price for the ugly patriarchal power play...it's a society rotting while the country surges ahead to be a global power. ANTARDWAND is a film that stokes the sensitive, thinking viewer's ire, concern and empathy.
Says Sushil Rajpal, "This is just one side of the larger story- what propelled the director in me was the other and more moving part of the story. Such forced marriages wreak huge emotional damage on both the girl and the boy. More for the voiceless girl who is deeply entrenched in a male dominated feudalistic society where she has nothing else to fall back on. Whether deserted or divorced -the life of a hapless girl in such a claustrophobic society becomes a hellish and endless journey. She bears the stigma of 'being married but not married'."
Bollywood is increasing seeing a trend in films which showcases social issues. Besides PEEPLI LIVE, a potential award winner, Another National Award winning film, ANTARDWAND, that showcases social issues that plagues rural India, will be releasing in August.
The film stars Raj Singh Chaudhary (lead of highly acclaimed film GULAAL), Vinay Pathak, Swati Sen (FTII graduadte, best actress winner) and Akhilendra Mishra.
Read the 2 related articles below, enjoy~
Aug 18, 2010
After PEEPLI LIVE, ANTARDWAND highlights rural issues
ANTARDWAND, a National Award winning film based on Groom Kidnapping, is inspired from a true story of the director Sushil Rajpal's closest friend, who still suffers from the psychological scare of being kidnapped and forcibly married to someone, he didn't intent to. Though he later escaped and presently lives in an urban city, the case is still in court, because he is still legally married.
Director Sushil Rajpal could empathize with his friend, but yet he also understood the psychological trauma, the bride must have been facing, since she too was married and yet not 'married' and 'deserted' to her fate.
Director Sushil Rajpal felt it was his moral duty and sacrificed his entire savings to bring this issue of 'Groom Kidnapping' to urban India, which had closed its eyes to rural India and the twin social evil of 'Groom Kidnapping' and related issue of 'Dowry'.
It is surprising still, because Groom Kidnapping has got a social sanction amongst the upper caste, in the northern states, especially Bihar, where potential bridegrooms who have done their IAS, Engineering etc. are targets, because the bride family can't afford the high dowry rates. It's a society where human beings are 'traded' as animals, with social sanction, wherein its 'acceptable.' It could have happened to anyone of us, if we stayed in those parts of India.
And so, as PEEPLI LIVE has brought the focus of Urban India to the issues faced in rural India, in an entertaining way, ANTARDWAND, too brings to light the social evil that plagues Rural India, in the mainstream media debate.
Says director Sushil Rajpal, "This is just one side of the larger story- what propelled the director in me was the other and more moving part of the story. Such forced marriages wreak huge emotional damage on both the girl and the boy. More for the voiceless girl who is deeply entrenched in a male dominated feudalistic society where she has nothing else to fall back on. Whether deserted or divorced -the life of a hapless girl in such a claustrophobic society becomes a hellish and endless journey. She bears the stigma of 'being married but not married'.
ANTARDWAND is slated to release next week on August 27th, 2010
July 29, 2010
Anurag Kashyap considers ANTARDWAND a gem
Anurag Kashyap's UDAAN got a stupendous response. He is becoming the face and voice of alternative good quality cinema that will take Indian cinema to the global stage. Amongst his listings of the future gems of films to be released, he considers ANTARDWAND as one of the gems to look forward to.
Anurag Kashyap wrote on his blog, "ANTARDWAND- By Sushil Rajpal.. till now a cameraman.. my senior from Hansraj, batchmate and friend of Tarsem Singh, ex- FTII has made a film. set in Bihar.. about a boy from delhi university who has appeared for his UPSC and wants to talk to his conservative dad (Vinay Pathak) about his girlfriend who is pregnant, and gets kidnapped by a man who wants him as his son-in-law.. so the boy (raja chaudhary) is tortured, but he doesn't agree to be the DAMAAD, but is still married of in a unconscious state, to the kidnappers daughter(a stunning debutant from FTII acting batch called SWATI), like it is the ptractice in many parts of that state, popularly called "jabariya shaadi".. marriage on the gunpoint.. extraordinary.. the kind of film that should be doing the rounds of the international festivals ...A masterpiece funded by friends.. who all are various partners in the film and mostly from the state.. must watch if it gets released.. a thriller , a reality check , and a point made.."
Groom abduction or 'Pakrauah Shaddi' so rampant in Bihar and Eastern UP, seemingly in the high caste Bhumihar community, to avoid another evil dowry, is touched upon in ANTARDWAND, directed by Sushil Rajpal.
The film is a peep into the reality that is mofussil India, a feudal India refusing to die-..it's a story where everybody involved pay a heavy price for the ugly patriarchal power play...it's a society rotting while the country surges ahead to be a global power. ANTARDWAND is a film that stokes the sensitive, thinking viewer's ire, concern and empathy.
Says Sushil Rajpal, "This is just one side of the larger story- what propelled the director in me was the other and more moving part of the story. Such forced marriages wreak huge emotional damage on both the girl and the boy. More for the voiceless girl who is deeply entrenched in a male dominated feudalistic society where she has nothing else to fall back on. Whether deserted or divorced -the life of a hapless girl in such a claustrophobic society becomes a hellish and endless journey. She bears the stigma of 'being married but not married'."
Bollywood is increasing seeing a trend in films which showcases social issues. Besides PEEPLI LIVE, a potential award winner, Another National Award winning film, ANTARDWAND, that showcases social issues that plagues rural India, will be releasing in August.
The film stars Raj Singh Chaudhary (lead of highly acclaimed film GULAAL), Vinay Pathak, Swati Sen (FTII graduadte, best actress winner) and Akhilendra Mishra.
Google Map GPS Cell Phone Tracker
Find your lost Android cell phone at http://www.mycelltracker.com/ and if you are a developer go to http://www.websmithing.com/ for more tutorials.
Trace Any Mobile / Landline Phone
Trace location of any Indian mobile phone. Find the Indian mobile Operators. Track mobiles in India. Search Indian FM radio stations. Find std codes of any place in India. Search any Indian location from its STD codes.
Track a mobile phone realtime using pc for free
How to trak a mobile phone realtime with your PC.No subscriptions needed its totally free. Many more ways, just use Google.
The sites for the softwares used
Aspicore gsm tracker
http://www.aspicore.com/en/tuotteet_tracker.asp
Franson GPS gate server
http://franson.com/gpsgateserver/
Google earth
http://earth.google.com/download-earth.html
The sites for the softwares used
Aspicore gsm tracker
http://www.aspicore.com/en/tuotteet_tracker.asp
Franson GPS gate server
http://franson.com/gpsgateserver/
Google earth
http://earth.google.com/download-earth.html
Signs of a cheating wife
Here are some signs your women is cheating on you, as explained by a women! Warning signs.
Learn the TOP 5 signs of a cheating women, girlfriend or wife using our proven tactics from this tutorial! You can also get more tips and videos from RelationshipMasteryOnline.com!
Learn the TOP 5 signs of a cheating women, girlfriend or wife using our proven tactics from this tutorial! You can also get more tips and videos from RelationshipMasteryOnline.com!
A Cheating Woman Is Worse Than A Cheating Man
Aug 18, 2010
Women are really worst cheaters then men, here is proof, women is agreeing and explaining why! Lot of psychology involved.
Women are really worst cheaters then men, here is proof, women is agreeing and explaining why! Lot of psychology involved.
MEN ARE BETTER THAN WOMEN
This guy Dick Masterson is the author of the book Men are Better than Women. Anyone ever heard of this guy before now? If you have not, I urge you to read some of the entries on his website:
http://www.menarebetterthanwomen.com/
http://www.menarebetterthanwomen.com/
Are Men Better Than Women - Let Dick Tell You About It?
Here is a man who finally tells it as it is, Mens Rights Movement Champion!
Feminism Is A Business
Aug 18, 2010
Feminism is the idea that women should be treated like children.
Didn’t accomplish anything this time around, sweetheart? That’s okay. Give it another shot after we bend the fuck out of the rules.
Scratch that. Feminism is the idea that women should be treated like spoiled children — who get do-overs and freebies until they’re chucking batteries at homeless people out the sunroof of their father’s BMW.
Well-raised kids get stuck with Dick Soup if that’s what they ordered. Do-overs are not a part of man-parenting. Do-overs are for ladies.
Feminism is the idea that women shouldn’t consider themselves happy unless they enjoy the same things men do — and that they should enjoy them at ten times the volume. Have you ever seen a woman pretend to like business or sports? If you have, then you’ve seen the very definition of an overcompensating attention whore. There isn’t a big screen on Earth that can drown out the “mating hoots” of a woman who’s convinced herself she likes basketball.
Professional athletes thrive on the respect and worship of men like they were Greek gods. A respect that is so inherent to Sport it cannot even be understood without a penis. Ladies, unless they’re on top of you, you don’t mean shit to professional athletes. You’re embarrassing yourselves with this unwanted fandom.
The idea of convincing someone to enjoy something more than they would otherwise might sound familiar to you. It’s called “marketing”.
You like beer…but do you like Coors Light? You should.
Personally, I don’t like Coors Light. I enjoy Boddingtons, Smithwick’s, Tecate, John Smith, Guinness, Imperial, MGD, and nearly any microbrew over 10% abv. But there are thousands of men out there who pay their mortgage every month just trying to convince me to add Coors to that list.
Carl’s Jr: F--k you, I’m eating.
Feminism is powered by women who eat and feed themselves and their dozens of worthless cats with money made by maintaining and promoting the infernal machine that is feminism.
There are women out there who make their living convincing young women to play sports. Otherwise, they lose their budget.
Without feminism, Women’s Studies “professors” and ten thousand of the ugliest bitches on Earth would have to learn how to fuck properly in order to put a roof over their heads. Because what does life spent promoting women’s issues prepare you for? It’s technically not “marketing” because these dozy broads buy it by the trough. That makes it a cult.
Feminism: the Cult of Do-Overs
Even if you swallow all the bullshit, “equality” is a task that has an end. However, if feminism ever achieves this imaginary task, thousands of know-nothing, over-educated bitches will be out of a job faster than their cats will resort to eating one another to stay alive in the real world. Feminism isn’t about achieving anything. It’s about staying in business.
Feminism is about creating more feminist problems.
If Richard Jewell had actually planted that bomb at the 96 Summer Olympics and then called it in so he would look like a hero — like Janet Reno said he did — feminism would be Richard Jewell.
I bet they don’t even offer an introductory course on carpet munching in Women’s Studies. As far as I see it, pretending you’re half “lesbian” is the first requirement to being a feminist.
Men love working our asses off. Men love stacking up our accomplishments and shoving them in everyone’s face — or sometimes not shoving them in everyone’s face, but still making sure that everyone knows they could be shoved in their face at any moment. That’s called “being the bigger man”. And that’s also something women can’t do. Men love partying, going out with our man-friends, and most importantly, sleeping around.
Women don’t.
Women like getting shit for free based on their looks, and as long as feminism doesn’t teach that, it’s a scam and a con and a cult. A cult of do-overs.
If you’re one of these Daddy’s Little Princesses who thinks I’m full of shit because I’m teaching some manly analogue to feminism, go fuck yourself. I don’t care if men don’t agree with me. I don’t give a fuck if anyone agrees with me.
I’ll make you guys a deal. If any of you don’t agree with me, go get a job in an office and get married to the sweetest, most caring, least likely to be a bitch in seven years while having at least two guys on the side that she secretly chats with on MySpace up until then, and then come see me in ten years with your opinion unchanged.
You’ll be back, but it won’t be to gloat.
I’ll be fucking feminism all week. It’ll be fun. Like fucking a girl with self-esteem so low she can’t tell the difference between love and not getting spit on.
Feminism is the idea that women should be treated like children.
Didn’t accomplish anything this time around, sweetheart? That’s okay. Give it another shot after we bend the fuck out of the rules.
Scratch that. Feminism is the idea that women should be treated like spoiled children — who get do-overs and freebies until they’re chucking batteries at homeless people out the sunroof of their father’s BMW.
Well-raised kids get stuck with Dick Soup if that’s what they ordered. Do-overs are not a part of man-parenting. Do-overs are for ladies.
Feminism is the idea that women shouldn’t consider themselves happy unless they enjoy the same things men do — and that they should enjoy them at ten times the volume. Have you ever seen a woman pretend to like business or sports? If you have, then you’ve seen the very definition of an overcompensating attention whore. There isn’t a big screen on Earth that can drown out the “mating hoots” of a woman who’s convinced herself she likes basketball.
Professional athletes thrive on the respect and worship of men like they were Greek gods. A respect that is so inherent to Sport it cannot even be understood without a penis. Ladies, unless they’re on top of you, you don’t mean shit to professional athletes. You’re embarrassing yourselves with this unwanted fandom.
The idea of convincing someone to enjoy something more than they would otherwise might sound familiar to you. It’s called “marketing”.
You like beer…but do you like Coors Light? You should.
Personally, I don’t like Coors Light. I enjoy Boddingtons, Smithwick’s, Tecate, John Smith, Guinness, Imperial, MGD, and nearly any microbrew over 10% abv. But there are thousands of men out there who pay their mortgage every month just trying to convince me to add Coors to that list.
Carl’s Jr: F--k you, I’m eating.
Feminism is powered by women who eat and feed themselves and their dozens of worthless cats with money made by maintaining and promoting the infernal machine that is feminism.
There are women out there who make their living convincing young women to play sports. Otherwise, they lose their budget.
Without feminism, Women’s Studies “professors” and ten thousand of the ugliest bitches on Earth would have to learn how to fuck properly in order to put a roof over their heads. Because what does life spent promoting women’s issues prepare you for? It’s technically not “marketing” because these dozy broads buy it by the trough. That makes it a cult.
Feminism: the Cult of Do-Overs
Even if you swallow all the bullshit, “equality” is a task that has an end. However, if feminism ever achieves this imaginary task, thousands of know-nothing, over-educated bitches will be out of a job faster than their cats will resort to eating one another to stay alive in the real world. Feminism isn’t about achieving anything. It’s about staying in business.
Feminism is about creating more feminist problems.
If Richard Jewell had actually planted that bomb at the 96 Summer Olympics and then called it in so he would look like a hero — like Janet Reno said he did — feminism would be Richard Jewell.
I bet they don’t even offer an introductory course on carpet munching in Women’s Studies. As far as I see it, pretending you’re half “lesbian” is the first requirement to being a feminist.
Men love working our asses off. Men love stacking up our accomplishments and shoving them in everyone’s face — or sometimes not shoving them in everyone’s face, but still making sure that everyone knows they could be shoved in their face at any moment. That’s called “being the bigger man”. And that’s also something women can’t do. Men love partying, going out with our man-friends, and most importantly, sleeping around.
Women don’t.
Women like getting shit for free based on their looks, and as long as feminism doesn’t teach that, it’s a scam and a con and a cult. A cult of do-overs.
If you’re one of these Daddy’s Little Princesses who thinks I’m full of shit because I’m teaching some manly analogue to feminism, go fuck yourself. I don’t care if men don’t agree with me. I don’t give a fuck if anyone agrees with me.
I’ll make you guys a deal. If any of you don’t agree with me, go get a job in an office and get married to the sweetest, most caring, least likely to be a bitch in seven years while having at least two guys on the side that she secretly chats with on MySpace up until then, and then come see me in ten years with your opinion unchanged.
You’ll be back, but it won’t be to gloat.
I’ll be fucking feminism all week. It’ll be fun. Like fucking a girl with self-esteem so low she can’t tell the difference between love and not getting spit on.
Ask Dick: Has Feminism Affected Anything?
Hey Dick, I have a question. In most of my life I have wondered how feminists have affected the media. For example, nowadays, a children’s presenter has to be clearly a young guy or they’re branded a pedophile. You get what I mean.
I’d really like some answers.
And I’d really like those barking-dog shock-collars to become the hottest women’s fashion item for 2007. Imagine what a utopia that would be. Every time a woman went to open her mouth, she’d get an electric Five Across the Eyes.
Women are too terrified during a crisis to say anything anyway. What’s the downside? At least this way they’d have an excuse. A sexy excuse.
Thinking back on children’s presenters, a few legends immediately come to mind: Captain Kangaroo, Mr. Wizard, and Mr. Rogers. Unlike any goddamn woman has ever done, these men brought smiles to the faces of millions of children for decades. That makes them a million times better than your average mother. I have a word for these men: legends. Women have a word for these men as well: pedophiles.
Women are so far up their own ass with how fucking great they are, they can’t give one ounce of credit to anyone who has ever done anything fantastic — or should I say mantastic. Women never get any credit for anything in the first place, so who can blame them. You can’t give someone a backwards purple nurple if you don’t know what it is. And it’s not called credit when you get the blame for fucking up, which women get and do constantly. It’s called blame. That’s why it’s actually called blame and not credit. Blame is all women know and that’s why they shoot it out of their mouths all day like broken sprinklers of shit.
But did feminism cause this?
Absolutely not. I was thinking about this while I was writing the above — that’s just the average day in the life of a man: thinking, writing, watching TV, snacking on some cashews, and not listening to someone on the phone all at the same time. I came to the conclusion that feminism has not affected shit in society.
The reason women call men children’s presenters pedophiles is because they’re immature and they think it’s funny.
Women have the emotional maturity of methadone addicts. They think everything in the world is funny. Shit, I make women laugh all the time and I don’t even try; they’re like retarded. You don’t even have to make a joke and they’ll laugh at it. And that includes laughing at the hard work and child rearing programmes put out by these brave men called children’s presenters.
Feminism didn’t make women behave poorly. They’ve been doing that for eons. Feminism just called attention to it.
I’d really like some answers.
And I’d really like those barking-dog shock-collars to become the hottest women’s fashion item for 2007. Imagine what a utopia that would be. Every time a woman went to open her mouth, she’d get an electric Five Across the Eyes.
Women are too terrified during a crisis to say anything anyway. What’s the downside? At least this way they’d have an excuse. A sexy excuse.
Thinking back on children’s presenters, a few legends immediately come to mind: Captain Kangaroo, Mr. Wizard, and Mr. Rogers. Unlike any goddamn woman has ever done, these men brought smiles to the faces of millions of children for decades. That makes them a million times better than your average mother. I have a word for these men: legends. Women have a word for these men as well: pedophiles.
Women are so far up their own ass with how fucking great they are, they can’t give one ounce of credit to anyone who has ever done anything fantastic — or should I say mantastic. Women never get any credit for anything in the first place, so who can blame them. You can’t give someone a backwards purple nurple if you don’t know what it is. And it’s not called credit when you get the blame for fucking up, which women get and do constantly. It’s called blame. That’s why it’s actually called blame and not credit. Blame is all women know and that’s why they shoot it out of their mouths all day like broken sprinklers of shit.
But did feminism cause this?
Absolutely not. I was thinking about this while I was writing the above — that’s just the average day in the life of a man: thinking, writing, watching TV, snacking on some cashews, and not listening to someone on the phone all at the same time. I came to the conclusion that feminism has not affected shit in society.
The reason women call men children’s presenters pedophiles is because they’re immature and they think it’s funny.
Women have the emotional maturity of methadone addicts. They think everything in the world is funny. Shit, I make women laugh all the time and I don’t even try; they’re like retarded. You don’t even have to make a joke and they’ll laugh at it. And that includes laughing at the hard work and child rearing programmes put out by these brave men called children’s presenters.
Feminism didn’t make women behave poorly. They’ve been doing that for eons. Feminism just called attention to it.
Why do feminist academics think that feminism has empowered women?
June 23, 2010
Here is an article written by an academic feminist in the Media.
The author exegetes the article:
In Bauer’s words: “If there’s anything that feminism has bequeathed to young women of means, it’s that power is their birthright. Visit an American college campus on a Monday morning and you’ll find any number of amazingly ambitious and talented young women wielding their brain power, determined not to let anything– including a relationship with some needy, dependent man– get in their way. Come back on party night, and you’ll find many of these same girls… wielding their sexual power, dressed as provocatively as they dare, matching guys drink for drink– and then hook up for hook up.”
Given the relatively lesser body mass of women compared with that of men, matching men drink for drink is a fool’s errand. Anyone who glorifies such behavior has completely lost touch with reality.
And why should Bauer be in awe of the fact that these girls can match men, hook up for hook up? If these women are so desirous of becoming unique individual self-creations, why should they be trying to emulate male behavior?
And let’s not overlook the piece of undisguised contempt for “some needy, dependent man” with whom these women might have relationships. The latest wave of feminism prefers hooking up to relationships.
According to Bauer, the party ends with said liberated empowered inebriated woman down on her knees. As Bauer so nicely expresses it: “When they’re on their knees in front of a worked-up guy they just met at a party, they genuinely feel powerful– sadistic even.”
Sometimes we get commenters who question whether feminism has anything to do with the behavior of women that we see today in college campuses. And to find out the truth, you have to read the elite feminists at the modern universities who have been grading the papers of women for the last 40 years. Was this alcohol-drenched hook-up culture unexpected by these elite academic feminists? On the contrary. It was their goal.
Feminists wanted to abolish the distinctions between men and women. They decided to achieve this by encouraging women to act like men. And the men they chose to emulate were alpha-male bad boys, since these are the men that women who don’t like marriage seem to really admire. Academic feminists like Bauer believe that women are happier now than they ever have been, with all this hooking up and being raised without fathers. They think they’ve won.
Here is an article written by an academic feminist in the Media.
The author exegetes the article:
In Bauer’s words: “If there’s anything that feminism has bequeathed to young women of means, it’s that power is their birthright. Visit an American college campus on a Monday morning and you’ll find any number of amazingly ambitious and talented young women wielding their brain power, determined not to let anything– including a relationship with some needy, dependent man– get in their way. Come back on party night, and you’ll find many of these same girls… wielding their sexual power, dressed as provocatively as they dare, matching guys drink for drink– and then hook up for hook up.”
Given the relatively lesser body mass of women compared with that of men, matching men drink for drink is a fool’s errand. Anyone who glorifies such behavior has completely lost touch with reality.
And why should Bauer be in awe of the fact that these girls can match men, hook up for hook up? If these women are so desirous of becoming unique individual self-creations, why should they be trying to emulate male behavior?
And let’s not overlook the piece of undisguised contempt for “some needy, dependent man” with whom these women might have relationships. The latest wave of feminism prefers hooking up to relationships.
According to Bauer, the party ends with said liberated empowered inebriated woman down on her knees. As Bauer so nicely expresses it: “When they’re on their knees in front of a worked-up guy they just met at a party, they genuinely feel powerful– sadistic even.”
Sometimes we get commenters who question whether feminism has anything to do with the behavior of women that we see today in college campuses. And to find out the truth, you have to read the elite feminists at the modern universities who have been grading the papers of women for the last 40 years. Was this alcohol-drenched hook-up culture unexpected by these elite academic feminists? On the contrary. It was their goal.
Feminists wanted to abolish the distinctions between men and women. They decided to achieve this by encouraging women to act like men. And the men they chose to emulate were alpha-male bad boys, since these are the men that women who don’t like marriage seem to really admire. Academic feminists like Bauer believe that women are happier now than they ever have been, with all this hooking up and being raised without fathers. They think they’ve won.
Wednesday, August 18, 2010
Men's forum demands national commission for them
Aug 17, 2010
SALEM: A national-level coordination forum of men has called for protection from wives and live-in partners whom they charged with exploiting women's welfare legislation that arm them with ‘unbridled' power to act against men.
The men, who claim to be ‘victims' of such legislation from all over the country, spent three days in a resort at the hill station of Yercaud near here to deliberate on how to protect themselves and their kith and kin from harassment and to kick-start a campaign to impress upon policy-makers to think about their plight before enacting such lop-sided laws.
The forum said that many women were abusing these laws for nefarious gains by filing charges against their husbands and partners.
The provisions in these statutes, they called, were ‘anti-men' leading to suicide of nearly 60,000 men as against 32,000 women annually.
Between 2004 and 2008, seven lakh men and family members were arrested including 500 minors and 5000 aged people, they claimed.
They pointed out that, for instance, laws such as the Dowry Prohibition Act, Protection of Women from Domestic Violence Act, Sec 125 of Cr. PC and above all Section 498A of Indian Penal Code were too stringent and non-bailable.
Women's lobbies
“Though a debate is going on in legal circles on whether to amend or not especially Sec 498A to prevent its abuse, a few powerful women's lobbies are blocking it,” said Suresh Ram, National Collegium member, All India Men's Welfare Association, which organised the 3 {+r} {+d} Men's Rights Conference of the Delhi-based Save Indian Family Foundation at Yercaud in Salem district.
Delegates from Maharashtra, Assam, West Bengal, Uttar Pradesh, Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh, Chattisgarh, Madhya Pradesh and from the U.S. attended the deliberations.
A majority of them were from Karnataka, mainly young Information Technology professionals. They said that they would urge the government to replace the words ‘Husband and Wife' with ‘Person' in the said acts. They said that cases before Family Courts should be expedited and settled within two years.
The government would be approached to form National Commission for Men, they add.
SALEM: A national-level coordination forum of men has called for protection from wives and live-in partners whom they charged with exploiting women's welfare legislation that arm them with ‘unbridled' power to act against men.
The men, who claim to be ‘victims' of such legislation from all over the country, spent three days in a resort at the hill station of Yercaud near here to deliberate on how to protect themselves and their kith and kin from harassment and to kick-start a campaign to impress upon policy-makers to think about their plight before enacting such lop-sided laws.
The forum said that many women were abusing these laws for nefarious gains by filing charges against their husbands and partners.
The provisions in these statutes, they called, were ‘anti-men' leading to suicide of nearly 60,000 men as against 32,000 women annually.
Between 2004 and 2008, seven lakh men and family members were arrested including 500 minors and 5000 aged people, they claimed.
They pointed out that, for instance, laws such as the Dowry Prohibition Act, Protection of Women from Domestic Violence Act, Sec 125 of Cr. PC and above all Section 498A of Indian Penal Code were too stringent and non-bailable.
Women's lobbies
“Though a debate is going on in legal circles on whether to amend or not especially Sec 498A to prevent its abuse, a few powerful women's lobbies are blocking it,” said Suresh Ram, National Collegium member, All India Men's Welfare Association, which organised the 3 {+r} {+d} Men's Rights Conference of the Delhi-based Save Indian Family Foundation at Yercaud in Salem district.
Delegates from Maharashtra, Assam, West Bengal, Uttar Pradesh, Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh, Chattisgarh, Madhya Pradesh and from the U.S. attended the deliberations.
A majority of them were from Karnataka, mainly young Information Technology professionals. They said that they would urge the government to replace the words ‘Husband and Wife' with ‘Person' in the said acts. They said that cases before Family Courts should be expedited and settled within two years.
The government would be approached to form National Commission for Men, they add.
NFHS opposes Marriage Laws (Amendment) Bill
Aug 6, 2010
A group promoting cause of family harmony and gender equality has strongly opposed the proposed Marriage Laws (Amendment) Bill due to its 'anti-husband' component.
With this proposed law, Union Minister for Law and Justice Veerappa Moily had violated his own promise of making laws gender neutral, Mr P Suresh, President of National Family Harmony Society (NFHS), which is working in support of the 'harassed husbands', said in a press release here today.
The bill, recently introduced in Rajya Sabha, dealt with 'irretrievable breakdown of marriage' and was against the interests of husbands, he alleged.
''NFHS registers its strong protest against certain section of the Marriage Law Amendment Bill, which according to us again expose the husband to the whims and fancies of his wifes decision and lead to this law being misused in collusion with the other gender laws of India like section 498A IPC and the DV Act,'' he said.
The 'irretrievable breakdown' ground should not be viewed as merely adding yet another clause to section 13 of the Hindu Marriage Act. Rather, it should be viewed as a disruptive change to the structural edifice of family law in India, he said.
Irretrievable breakdown changes the terms of divorce from a 'fault' basis to a 'no-fault' basis. That means either of the two adults in a marriage can unilaterally terminate it for any reason they please, he alleged.
''Government-backed abuse against Indian husbands, Indian Gender laws in particular, are so badly drafted that they outrightly exclude the possibility of a woman being the cause of any sort of marital discord,'' he opined.
He said some sections of the Bill were in clear violation of Article 15 of the Constitution that prohibits discrimination against any citizen on grounds of religion and sex.
A group promoting cause of family harmony and gender equality has strongly opposed the proposed Marriage Laws (Amendment) Bill due to its 'anti-husband' component.
With this proposed law, Union Minister for Law and Justice Veerappa Moily had violated his own promise of making laws gender neutral, Mr P Suresh, President of National Family Harmony Society (NFHS), which is working in support of the 'harassed husbands', said in a press release here today.
The bill, recently introduced in Rajya Sabha, dealt with 'irretrievable breakdown of marriage' and was against the interests of husbands, he alleged.
''NFHS registers its strong protest against certain section of the Marriage Law Amendment Bill, which according to us again expose the husband to the whims and fancies of his wifes decision and lead to this law being misused in collusion with the other gender laws of India like section 498A IPC and the DV Act,'' he said.
The 'irretrievable breakdown' ground should not be viewed as merely adding yet another clause to section 13 of the Hindu Marriage Act. Rather, it should be viewed as a disruptive change to the structural edifice of family law in India, he said.
Irretrievable breakdown changes the terms of divorce from a 'fault' basis to a 'no-fault' basis. That means either of the two adults in a marriage can unilaterally terminate it for any reason they please, he alleged.
''Government-backed abuse against Indian husbands, Indian Gender laws in particular, are so badly drafted that they outrightly exclude the possibility of a woman being the cause of any sort of marital discord,'' he opined.
He said some sections of the Bill were in clear violation of Article 15 of the Constitution that prohibits discrimination against any citizen on grounds of religion and sex.
(Video's) BN7 discussion-SC judgment on misuse of 498a and need for amendment
Aug 17, 2010
Part 1
Part 2
Part 1
Part 2
(Judgement) SC: Direction to Indian Government to Curb 498a Misuse
Here is the judgement sent to the Indian Government on behalf of the SC of India.
http://judis.nic.in/supremecourt/imgs.aspx
IN THE SUPREME COURT OF INDIA
CRIMINAL APPELLATE JURISDICTION
CRIMINAL APPEAL NO. 1512 OF 2010
(Arising out of SLP (Crl.) No.4684 of 2009)
Preeti Gupta & Another …Appellants
Versus
State of Jharkhand & Another ….Respondents
J U D G M E N T
Dalveer Bhandari, J.
1. Leave granted.
2. This appeal has been filed by Preeti Gupta the married sister-in-law and a permanent resident of Navasari, Surat, Gujarat with her husband and Gaurav Poddar, a permanent resident of Goregaon, Maharashtra, who is the unmarried brother-in-law of the complainant, Manisha Poddar, against the impugned judgment of the High Court of Jharkhand at Ranchi, Jharkhand dated 27.4.2009 passed in Criminal Miscellaneous Petition Nos.304 of 2009.
3. Brief facts which are necessary to dispose of this appeal are recapitulated as under:
The Complainant Manisha was married to Kamal Poddar at Kanpur on 10.12.2006. Immediately after the marriage, the complainant who is respondent no.2 in this appeal left for Mumbai along with her husband Kamal Poddar who was working with the Tata Consultancy Services (for short “TCS”) and was permanently residing at Mumbai. The complainant also joined the TCS at Mumbai on 23.12.2006. Respondent no.2 visited Ranchi to participate in “Gangaur” festival (an important Hindu festival widely celebrated in Northern India) on 16.3.2007. After staying there for a week, she returned to Mumbai on 24.03.2007.
4. Respondent no.2, Manisha Poddar filed a complaint on 08.07.2007 before the Chief Judicial Magistrate, Ranchi under sections 498-A, 406, 341, 323 and 120-B of the Indian Penal Code read with sections 3 and 4 of the Dowry Prohibition Act against all immediate relations of her husband, namely, Pyarelal Poddar (father-in-law), Kamal Poddar (husband), Sushila Devi (mother-in-law), Gaurav Poddar (unmarried brother-in-law) and Preeti Gupta @ Preeti Agrawal (married sister-in-law). The complaint was transferred to the court of the Judicial Magistrate, Ranchi. Statements of Respondent no.2 and other witnesses were recorded and on 10.10.2008 the Judicial Magistrate took cognizance and passed the summoning order of the appellants. The appellants are aggrieved by the said summoning order.
5. In the criminal complaint, it was alleged that a luxury car was demanded by all the accused named in the complaint. It was also alleged that respondent no.2 was physically assaulted at Mumbai. According to the said allegations of the complainant, it appears that the alleged incidents had taken place either at Kanpur or Mumbai. According to the averments of the complaint, except for the demand of the luxury car no incident of harassment took place at Ranchi.
6. According to the appellants, there was no specific allegation against both the appellants in the complaint. Appellant no.1 had been permanently residing with her husband at Navasari, Surat (Gujarat) for the last more than seven years. She had never visited Mumbai during the year 2007 and never stayed with respondent no.2 or her husband. Similarly, appellant no.2, unmarried brother-in-law of the complainant has also been permanently residing at Goregaon, Maharashtra.
7. It was asserted that there is no specific allegation in the entire complaint against both the appellants. The statements of prosecution witnesses PW1 to PW4 were also recorded along with the statement of the complainant. None of the prosecution witnesses had stated anything against the appellants. These appellants had very clearly stated in this appeal that they had never visited Ranchi. The appellants also stated that they had never interfered with the internal affairs of the complainant and her husband. According to them, there was no question of any interference because the appellants had been living in different cities for a number of years.
8. It was clearly alleged by the appellants that they had been falsely implicated in this case. It was further stated that the complaint against the appellants was totally without any basis or foundation. The appellants also asserted that even if all the allegations incorporated in the complaint were taken to be true, even then no offence could be made out against them.
9. The appellants had submitted that the High Court ought to have quashed this complaint as far as both the appellants are concerned because there were no specific allegations against the appellants and they ought not have been summoned. In the impugned judgment, while declining to exercise its inherent powers, the High Court observed as under:
“In this context, I may again reiterate that the acts relating to demand or subjecting to cruelty, as per the complaint petition, have been committed at the place where the complainant was living with her husband. However, the complainant in her statement made under solemn affirmation has stated that when she came to Ranchi on the occasion of Holi, all the accused persons came and passed sarcastic remarks which in absence of actual wordings, according to the learned counsel appearing for the petitioner could never be presumed to be an act constituting offence under section 498A of the Indian Penal Code.”
10. In this appeal, both the appellants specifically asserted that they had never visited Ranchi, therefore, the allegations that they made any sarcastic remarks to the complainant had no basis or foundation as far as the appellants are concerned.
11. The complainant could not dispute that appellant no.1 was a permanent resident living with her husband at Navasari, Surat, Gujarat for the last more than seven years and the appellant no.2 was permanent resident of Goregaon, Maharashtra. They had never spent any time with respondent no.2.
12. According to the appellants, they are not the residents of Ranchi and if they are compelled to attend the Ranchi Court repeatedly then that would lead to insurmountable harassment and inconvenience to the appellants as well as to the complainant.
13. The complaint in this case under section 498-A IPC has led to several other cases. It is mentioned that a divorce petition has been filed by the husband of respondent no.2. Both respondent no.2 and her husband are highly qualified and are working with reputed organization like Tata Consultancy Service. If because of temperamental incompatibility they cannot live with each other then it is proper that they should jointly get a decree of divorce by mutual consent. Both respondent no.2 and her husband are in such age group that if proper efforts are made, their resettlement may not be impossible.
14. The main question which falls for consideration in this case is whether the High Court was justified in not exercising its inherent powers under section 482 of the Code of Criminal Procedure in the facts and circumstances of this case?
15. This court in a number of cases has laid down the scope and ambit of courts’ powers under section 482 Cr.P.C. Every High Court has inherent power to act ex debito justitiae to do real and substantial justice, for the administration of which alone it exists, or to prevent abuse of the process of the court.
Inherent power under section 482 Cr.P.C. can be exercised:
(i) to give effect to an order under the Code;
(ii) to prevent abuse of the process of court, and
(iii) to otherwise secure the ends of justice.
16. Reference to the following cases would reveal that the courts have consistently taken the view that they must use this extraordinary power to prevent injustice and secure the ends of justice. The English courts have also used inherent power to achieve the same objective. It is generally agreed that the Crown Court has inherent power to protect its process from abuse. In Connelly v. Director of Public Prosecutions [1964] AC 1254, Lord Devlin stated that where particular criminal proceedings constitute an abuse of process, the court is empowered to refuse to allow the indictment to proceed to trial. Lord Salmon in Director of Public Prosecutions v. Humphrys [1977] AC 1 stressed the importance of the inherent power when he observed that it is only if the prosecution amounts to an abuse of the process of the court and is oppressive and vexatious that the judge has the power to intervene. He further mentioned that the court’s power to prevent such abuse is of great constitutional importance and should be jealously preserved.
17. The powers possessed by the High Court under section 482 of the Code are very wide and the very plenitude of the power requires great caution in its exercise. The court must be careful to see that its decision in exercise of this power is based on sound principles. The inherent power should not be exercised to stifle a legitimate prosecution but court’s failing to use the power for advancement of justice can also lead to grave injustice. The High Court should normally refrain from giving a prima facie decision in a case where all the facts are incomplete and hazy; more so, when the evidence has not been collected and produced before the court and the issues involved, whether factual or legal, are of such magnitude that they cannot be seen in their true perspective without sufficient material. Of course, no hard and fast rule can be laid down in regard to cases in which the High Court will exercise its extraordinary jurisdiction of quashing the proceedings at any stage.
18. This court had occasion to examine the legal position in a large number of cases. In R.P. Kapur v. State of Punjab AIR 1960 SC 866, this court summarized some categories of cases where inherent power can and should be exercised to quash the proceedings:
(i) where it manifestly appears that there is a legal bar against the institution or continuance of the proceedings;
(ii) where the allegations in the first information report or complaint taken at their face value and accepted in their entirety do not constitute the offence alleged;
(iii) where the allegations constitute an offence, but there is no legal evidence adduced or the evidence adduced clearly or manifestly fails to prove the charge.
19. This court in State of Karnataka v. L. Muniswamy & Others (1977) 2 SCC 699 observed that the wholesome power under section 482 Cr.P.C. entitles the High Court to quash a proceeding when it comes to the conclusion that allowing the proceeding to continue would be an abuse of the process of the court or that the ends of justice require that the proceeding ought to be quashed. The High Courts have been invested with inherent powers, both in civil and criminal matters, to achieve a salutary public purpose. A court proceeding ought not to be permitted to degenerate into a weapon of harassment or persecution. In this case, the court observed that ends of justice are higher than the ends of mere law though justice must be administered according to laws made by the legislature. This case has been followed in a large number of subsequent cases of this court and other courts.
20. In Madhu Limaye v. The State of Maharashtra (1977) 4 SCC 551, a three-Judge Bench of this court held as under:-
“…..In case the impugned order clearly brings out a situation which is an abuse of the
process of the court, or for the purpose of securing the ends of justice interference by the High Court is absolutely necessary, then nothing contained in Section 397(2) can limit or affect the exercise of the inherent power by the High Court. Such cases would necessarily be few and far between. One such case would be the desirability of the quashing of a criminal proceeding initiated illegally, vexatiously or as being without jurisdiction. The present case would undoubtedly fall for exercise of the power of the High Court in accordance with Section 482 of the 1973 Code, even assuming, that the invoking of the revisional power of the High Court is impermissible.”
21. This court in Madhavrao Jiwajirao Scindia & Othersv. Sambhajirao Chandrojirao Angre & Others (1988) 1 SCC 692 observed in para 7 as under:
“7. The legal position is well settled that when a prosecution at the initial stage is asked to be quashed, the test to be applied by the court is as to whether the uncontroverted allegations as made prima facie establish the offence. It is also for the court to take into consideration any special features which appear in a particular case to consider whether it is expedient and in the interest of justice to permit a prosecution to continue. This is so on the basis that the court cannot be utilized for any oblique purpose and where in the opinion of the court chances of an ultimate conviction is bleak and, therefore, no useful purpose is likely to be served by allowing a criminal prosecution to continue, the court may while taking into consideration the special facts of a case also quash the proceeding even though it may be at a preliminary stage.”
22. In State of Haryana & Others v. Bhajan Lal & Others1992 Supp. (1) SCC 335, this court in the backdrop of interpretation of various relevant provisions of the Code of Criminal Procedure (for short, Cr.P.C.) under Chapter XIV and of the principles of law enunciated by this court in a series of decisions relating to the exercise of the extraordinary power under Article 226 of the Constitution of India or the inherent powers under section 482 Cr.P.C. gave the following categories of cases by way of illustration wherein such power could be exercised either to prevent abuse of the process of the court or otherwise to secure the ends of justice. Thus, this court made it clear that it may not be possible to lay down any precise, clearly defined and sufficiently channelised and inflexible guidelines or rigid formulae and to give an exhaustive list to myriad kinds of cases wherein such power should be exercised:
“(1) Where the allegations made in the first information report or the complaint, even if
they are taken at their face value and accepted in their entirety do not prima facie constitute any offence or make out a case against the accused.
(2) Where the allegations in the first information report and other materials, if any,
accompanying the FIR do not disclose a cognizable offence, justifying an investigation
by police officers under Section 156(1) of the Code except under an order of a Magistrate within the purview of Section 155(2) of the Code.
(3) Where the uncontroverted allegations made in the FIR or complaint and the evidence
collected in support of the same do not disclose the commission of any offence and
make out a case against the accused.
(4) Where, the allegations in the FIR do not constitute a cognizable offence but constitute only a non-cognizable offence, no investigationis permitted by a police officer without an order of a Magistrate as contemplated under Section 155(2) of the Code.
(5) Where the allegations made in the FIR or complaint are so absurd and inherently
improbable on the basis of which no prudent person can ever reach a just conclusion that there is sufficient ground for proceeding against the accused.
(6) Where there is an express legal bar engrafted in any of the provisions of the Code or the concerned Act (under which a criminal proceeding is instituted) to the institution and continuance of the proceedings and/or where there is a specific provision in the Code or the concerned Act, providing efficacious redress for the grievance of the aggrieved party.
(7) Where a criminal proceeding is manifestly attended with mala fide and/or where the
proceeding is maliciously instituted with an ulterior motive for wreaking vengeance on the
accused and with a view to spite him due to private and personal grudge.”
23. In G. Sagar Suri & Another v. State of UP & Others(2000) 2 SCC 636, this court observed that it is the duty and obligation of the criminal court to exercise a great deal of caution in issuing the process particularly when matters are essentially of civil nature.
24. This court in Zandu Pharmaceutical Works Ltd. & Others v. Mohd. Sharaful Haque & Another (2005) 1 SCC 122 observed thus:-
“It would be an abuse of process of the court to allow any action which would result in injustice and prevent promotion of justice. In exercise of the powers, court would be justified to quash any proceeding if it finds that initiation/continuance of it amounts to abuse of the process of court or quashing of these proceedings would otherwise serve the ends of justice. When no offence is disclosed by the complaint, the court may examine the question of fact. When a complaint is sought to be quashed, it is permissible to look into the materials to assess what the complainant hasalleged and whether any offence is made out even if the allegations are accepted in toto.”
25. A three-Judge Bench (of which one of us, Bhandari, J. was the author of the judgment) of this Court in Inder Mohan Goswami and Another v. State of Uttaranchal & Others(2007) 12 SCC 1 comprehensively examined the legal position. The court came to a definite conclusion and the relevant observations of the court are reproduced in para 24 of the said judgment as under:-
“Inherent powers under section 482 Cr.P.C. though wide have to be exercised sparingly, carefully and with great caution and only when such exercise is justified by the tests specifically laid down in this section itself. Authority of the court exists for the advancement of justice. If any abuse of the process leading to injustice is brought to the notice of the court, then the Court would be justified in preventing injustice by invoking inherent powers in absence of specific provisions in the Statute.”
26. We have very carefully considered the averments of the complaint and the statements of all the witnesses recorded at the time of the filing of the complaint. There are no specific allegations against the appellants in the complaint and none of the witnesses have alleged any role of both the appellants.
27. Admittedly, appellant no.1 is a permanent resident of Navasari, Surat, Gujarat and has been living with her husband for more than seven years. Similarly, appellant no.2 is a permanent resident of Goregaon, Maharasthra. They have never visited the place where the alleged incident had taken place. They had never lived with respondent no.2 and her husband. Their implication in the complaint is meant to harass and humiliate the husband’s relatives. This seems to be the only basis to file this complaint against the appellants. Permitting the complainant to pursue this complaint would be an abuse of the process of law.
28. It is a matter of common knowledge that unfortunately matrimonial litigation is rapidly increasing in our country. All the courts in our country including this court are flooded with matrimonial cases. This clearly demonstrates discontent and unrest in the family life of a large number of people of the society.
29. The courts are receiving a large number of cases emanating from section 498-A of the Indian Penal Code which
reads as under:-
“498-A. Husband or relative of husband of a woman subjecting her to cruelty.—Whoever, being
the husband or the relative of the husband of a woman, subjects such woman to cruelty shall be punished with imprisonment for a term which may extend to three years and shall also be liable to fine.
Explanation.—For the purposes of this section, ‘cruelty’ means:-
(a) any wilful conduct which is of such a nature as is likely to drive the woman to commit suicide or to cause grave injury or danger to life, limb or health (whether mental or physical) of the woman; or
(b) harassment of the woman where such harassment is with a view to coercing her or any person related to her to meet any unlawful demand for any property or valuable security or is on account of failure by her or any person related to her to meet such demand.”
30. It is a matter of common experience that most of these complaints under section 498-A IPC are filed in the heat of the moment over trivial issues without proper deliberations. We come across a large number of such complaints which are not even bona fide and are filed with oblique motive. At the same time, rapid increase in the number of genuine cases of dowry harassment are also a matter of serious concern.
31. The learned members of the Bar have enormous social responsibility and obligation to ensure that the social fiber of family life is not ruined or demolished. They must ensure that exaggerated versions of small incidents should not be reflected in the criminal complaints. Majority of the complaints are filed either on their advice or with their concurrence. The learned members of the Bar who belong to a noble profession must maintain its noble traditions and should treat every complaint under section 498-A as a basic human problem and must make serious endeavour to help the parties in arriving at an amicable resolution of that human problem. They must discharge their duties to the best of their abilities to ensure that social fiber, peace and tranquility of the society remains intact. The members of the Bar should also ensure that one complaint should not lead to multiple cases.
32. Unfortunately, at the time of filing of the complaint the implications and consequences are not properly visualized by the complainant that such complaint can lead to insurmountable harassment, agony and pain to the complainant, accused and his close relations.
33. The ultimate object of justice is to find out the truth and punish the guilty and protect the innocent. To find out the truth is a herculean task in majority of these complaints. The tendency of implicating husband and all his immediate relations is also not uncommon. At times, even after the conclusion of criminal trial, it is difficult to ascertain the real truth. The courts have to be extremely careful and cautious in dealing with these complaints and must take pragmatic realities into consideration while dealing with matrimonial cases. The allegations of harassment of husband’s close relations who had been living in different cities and never visited or rarely visited the place where the complainant resided would have an entirely different complexion. The allegations of the complaint are required to be scrutinized with great care and circumspection. Experience reveals that long and protracted criminal trials lead to rancour, acrimony and bitterness in the relationship amongst the parties. It is also a matter of common knowledge that in cases filed by the complainant if the husband or the husband’s relations had to remain in jail even for a few days, it would ruin the chances of amicable settlement altogether. The process of suffering is extremely long and painful.
34. Before parting with this case, we would like to observe that a serious relook of the entire provision is warranted by the legislation. It is also a matter of common knowledge that exaggerated versions of the incident are reflected in a large number of complaints. The tendency of over implication is also reflected in a very large number of cases.
35. The criminal trials lead to immense sufferings for all concerned. Even ultimate acquittal in the trial may also not be able to wipe out the deep scars of suffering of ignominy. Unfortunately a large number of these complaints have not only flooded the courts but also have led to enormous social unrest affecting peace, harmony and happiness of the society. It is high time that the legislature must take into consideration the pragmatic realities and make suitable changes in the existing law. It is imperative for the legislature to take into consideration the informed public opinion and the pragmatic realities in consideration and make necessary changes in the relevant provisions of law. We direct the Registry to send a copy of this judgment to the Law Commission and to the Union Law Secretary, Government of India who may place it before the Hon’ble Minister for Law & Justice to take appropriate steps in the larger interest of the society.
36. When the facts and circumstances of the case are considered in the background of legal principles set out in preceding paragraphs, then it would be unfair to compel the appellants to undergo the rigmarole of a criminal trial. In the interest of justice, we deem it appropriate to quash the complaint against the appellants. As a result, the impugned judgment of the High Court is set aside. Consequently, this appeal is allowed.
…….……………………..J.
(Dalveer Bhandari)
…….……………………..J.
(K.S. Radhakrishnan)
New Delhi;
August 13, 2010
http://judis.nic.in/supremecourt/imgs.aspx
IN THE SUPREME COURT OF INDIA
CRIMINAL APPELLATE JURISDICTION
CRIMINAL APPEAL NO. 1512 OF 2010
(Arising out of SLP (Crl.) No.4684 of 2009)
Preeti Gupta & Another …Appellants
Versus
State of Jharkhand & Another ….Respondents
J U D G M E N T
Dalveer Bhandari, J.
1. Leave granted.
2. This appeal has been filed by Preeti Gupta the married sister-in-law and a permanent resident of Navasari, Surat, Gujarat with her husband and Gaurav Poddar, a permanent resident of Goregaon, Maharashtra, who is the unmarried brother-in-law of the complainant, Manisha Poddar, against the impugned judgment of the High Court of Jharkhand at Ranchi, Jharkhand dated 27.4.2009 passed in Criminal Miscellaneous Petition Nos.304 of 2009.
3. Brief facts which are necessary to dispose of this appeal are recapitulated as under:
The Complainant Manisha was married to Kamal Poddar at Kanpur on 10.12.2006. Immediately after the marriage, the complainant who is respondent no.2 in this appeal left for Mumbai along with her husband Kamal Poddar who was working with the Tata Consultancy Services (for short “TCS”) and was permanently residing at Mumbai. The complainant also joined the TCS at Mumbai on 23.12.2006. Respondent no.2 visited Ranchi to participate in “Gangaur” festival (an important Hindu festival widely celebrated in Northern India) on 16.3.2007. After staying there for a week, she returned to Mumbai on 24.03.2007.
4. Respondent no.2, Manisha Poddar filed a complaint on 08.07.2007 before the Chief Judicial Magistrate, Ranchi under sections 498-A, 406, 341, 323 and 120-B of the Indian Penal Code read with sections 3 and 4 of the Dowry Prohibition Act against all immediate relations of her husband, namely, Pyarelal Poddar (father-in-law), Kamal Poddar (husband), Sushila Devi (mother-in-law), Gaurav Poddar (unmarried brother-in-law) and Preeti Gupta @ Preeti Agrawal (married sister-in-law). The complaint was transferred to the court of the Judicial Magistrate, Ranchi. Statements of Respondent no.2 and other witnesses were recorded and on 10.10.2008 the Judicial Magistrate took cognizance and passed the summoning order of the appellants. The appellants are aggrieved by the said summoning order.
5. In the criminal complaint, it was alleged that a luxury car was demanded by all the accused named in the complaint. It was also alleged that respondent no.2 was physically assaulted at Mumbai. According to the said allegations of the complainant, it appears that the alleged incidents had taken place either at Kanpur or Mumbai. According to the averments of the complaint, except for the demand of the luxury car no incident of harassment took place at Ranchi.
6. According to the appellants, there was no specific allegation against both the appellants in the complaint. Appellant no.1 had been permanently residing with her husband at Navasari, Surat (Gujarat) for the last more than seven years. She had never visited Mumbai during the year 2007 and never stayed with respondent no.2 or her husband. Similarly, appellant no.2, unmarried brother-in-law of the complainant has also been permanently residing at Goregaon, Maharashtra.
7. It was asserted that there is no specific allegation in the entire complaint against both the appellants. The statements of prosecution witnesses PW1 to PW4 were also recorded along with the statement of the complainant. None of the prosecution witnesses had stated anything against the appellants. These appellants had very clearly stated in this appeal that they had never visited Ranchi. The appellants also stated that they had never interfered with the internal affairs of the complainant and her husband. According to them, there was no question of any interference because the appellants had been living in different cities for a number of years.
8. It was clearly alleged by the appellants that they had been falsely implicated in this case. It was further stated that the complaint against the appellants was totally without any basis or foundation. The appellants also asserted that even if all the allegations incorporated in the complaint were taken to be true, even then no offence could be made out against them.
9. The appellants had submitted that the High Court ought to have quashed this complaint as far as both the appellants are concerned because there were no specific allegations against the appellants and they ought not have been summoned. In the impugned judgment, while declining to exercise its inherent powers, the High Court observed as under:
“In this context, I may again reiterate that the acts relating to demand or subjecting to cruelty, as per the complaint petition, have been committed at the place where the complainant was living with her husband. However, the complainant in her statement made under solemn affirmation has stated that when she came to Ranchi on the occasion of Holi, all the accused persons came and passed sarcastic remarks which in absence of actual wordings, according to the learned counsel appearing for the petitioner could never be presumed to be an act constituting offence under section 498A of the Indian Penal Code.”
10. In this appeal, both the appellants specifically asserted that they had never visited Ranchi, therefore, the allegations that they made any sarcastic remarks to the complainant had no basis or foundation as far as the appellants are concerned.
11. The complainant could not dispute that appellant no.1 was a permanent resident living with her husband at Navasari, Surat, Gujarat for the last more than seven years and the appellant no.2 was permanent resident of Goregaon, Maharashtra. They had never spent any time with respondent no.2.
12. According to the appellants, they are not the residents of Ranchi and if they are compelled to attend the Ranchi Court repeatedly then that would lead to insurmountable harassment and inconvenience to the appellants as well as to the complainant.
13. The complaint in this case under section 498-A IPC has led to several other cases. It is mentioned that a divorce petition has been filed by the husband of respondent no.2. Both respondent no.2 and her husband are highly qualified and are working with reputed organization like Tata Consultancy Service. If because of temperamental incompatibility they cannot live with each other then it is proper that they should jointly get a decree of divorce by mutual consent. Both respondent no.2 and her husband are in such age group that if proper efforts are made, their resettlement may not be impossible.
14. The main question which falls for consideration in this case is whether the High Court was justified in not exercising its inherent powers under section 482 of the Code of Criminal Procedure in the facts and circumstances of this case?
15. This court in a number of cases has laid down the scope and ambit of courts’ powers under section 482 Cr.P.C. Every High Court has inherent power to act ex debito justitiae to do real and substantial justice, for the administration of which alone it exists, or to prevent abuse of the process of the court.
Inherent power under section 482 Cr.P.C. can be exercised:
(i) to give effect to an order under the Code;
(ii) to prevent abuse of the process of court, and
(iii) to otherwise secure the ends of justice.
16. Reference to the following cases would reveal that the courts have consistently taken the view that they must use this extraordinary power to prevent injustice and secure the ends of justice. The English courts have also used inherent power to achieve the same objective. It is generally agreed that the Crown Court has inherent power to protect its process from abuse. In Connelly v. Director of Public Prosecutions [1964] AC 1254, Lord Devlin stated that where particular criminal proceedings constitute an abuse of process, the court is empowered to refuse to allow the indictment to proceed to trial. Lord Salmon in Director of Public Prosecutions v. Humphrys [1977] AC 1 stressed the importance of the inherent power when he observed that it is only if the prosecution amounts to an abuse of the process of the court and is oppressive and vexatious that the judge has the power to intervene. He further mentioned that the court’s power to prevent such abuse is of great constitutional importance and should be jealously preserved.
17. The powers possessed by the High Court under section 482 of the Code are very wide and the very plenitude of the power requires great caution in its exercise. The court must be careful to see that its decision in exercise of this power is based on sound principles. The inherent power should not be exercised to stifle a legitimate prosecution but court’s failing to use the power for advancement of justice can also lead to grave injustice. The High Court should normally refrain from giving a prima facie decision in a case where all the facts are incomplete and hazy; more so, when the evidence has not been collected and produced before the court and the issues involved, whether factual or legal, are of such magnitude that they cannot be seen in their true perspective without sufficient material. Of course, no hard and fast rule can be laid down in regard to cases in which the High Court will exercise its extraordinary jurisdiction of quashing the proceedings at any stage.
18. This court had occasion to examine the legal position in a large number of cases. In R.P. Kapur v. State of Punjab AIR 1960 SC 866, this court summarized some categories of cases where inherent power can and should be exercised to quash the proceedings:
(i) where it manifestly appears that there is a legal bar against the institution or continuance of the proceedings;
(ii) where the allegations in the first information report or complaint taken at their face value and accepted in their entirety do not constitute the offence alleged;
(iii) where the allegations constitute an offence, but there is no legal evidence adduced or the evidence adduced clearly or manifestly fails to prove the charge.
19. This court in State of Karnataka v. L. Muniswamy & Others (1977) 2 SCC 699 observed that the wholesome power under section 482 Cr.P.C. entitles the High Court to quash a proceeding when it comes to the conclusion that allowing the proceeding to continue would be an abuse of the process of the court or that the ends of justice require that the proceeding ought to be quashed. The High Courts have been invested with inherent powers, both in civil and criminal matters, to achieve a salutary public purpose. A court proceeding ought not to be permitted to degenerate into a weapon of harassment or persecution. In this case, the court observed that ends of justice are higher than the ends of mere law though justice must be administered according to laws made by the legislature. This case has been followed in a large number of subsequent cases of this court and other courts.
20. In Madhu Limaye v. The State of Maharashtra (1977) 4 SCC 551, a three-Judge Bench of this court held as under:-
“…..In case the impugned order clearly brings out a situation which is an abuse of the
process of the court, or for the purpose of securing the ends of justice interference by the High Court is absolutely necessary, then nothing contained in Section 397(2) can limit or affect the exercise of the inherent power by the High Court. Such cases would necessarily be few and far between. One such case would be the desirability of the quashing of a criminal proceeding initiated illegally, vexatiously or as being without jurisdiction. The present case would undoubtedly fall for exercise of the power of the High Court in accordance with Section 482 of the 1973 Code, even assuming, that the invoking of the revisional power of the High Court is impermissible.”
21. This court in Madhavrao Jiwajirao Scindia & Othersv. Sambhajirao Chandrojirao Angre & Others (1988) 1 SCC 692 observed in para 7 as under:
“7. The legal position is well settled that when a prosecution at the initial stage is asked to be quashed, the test to be applied by the court is as to whether the uncontroverted allegations as made prima facie establish the offence. It is also for the court to take into consideration any special features which appear in a particular case to consider whether it is expedient and in the interest of justice to permit a prosecution to continue. This is so on the basis that the court cannot be utilized for any oblique purpose and where in the opinion of the court chances of an ultimate conviction is bleak and, therefore, no useful purpose is likely to be served by allowing a criminal prosecution to continue, the court may while taking into consideration the special facts of a case also quash the proceeding even though it may be at a preliminary stage.”
22. In State of Haryana & Others v. Bhajan Lal & Others1992 Supp. (1) SCC 335, this court in the backdrop of interpretation of various relevant provisions of the Code of Criminal Procedure (for short, Cr.P.C.) under Chapter XIV and of the principles of law enunciated by this court in a series of decisions relating to the exercise of the extraordinary power under Article 226 of the Constitution of India or the inherent powers under section 482 Cr.P.C. gave the following categories of cases by way of illustration wherein such power could be exercised either to prevent abuse of the process of the court or otherwise to secure the ends of justice. Thus, this court made it clear that it may not be possible to lay down any precise, clearly defined and sufficiently channelised and inflexible guidelines or rigid formulae and to give an exhaustive list to myriad kinds of cases wherein such power should be exercised:
“(1) Where the allegations made in the first information report or the complaint, even if
they are taken at their face value and accepted in their entirety do not prima facie constitute any offence or make out a case against the accused.
(2) Where the allegations in the first information report and other materials, if any,
accompanying the FIR do not disclose a cognizable offence, justifying an investigation
by police officers under Section 156(1) of the Code except under an order of a Magistrate within the purview of Section 155(2) of the Code.
(3) Where the uncontroverted allegations made in the FIR or complaint and the evidence
collected in support of the same do not disclose the commission of any offence and
make out a case against the accused.
(4) Where, the allegations in the FIR do not constitute a cognizable offence but constitute only a non-cognizable offence, no investigationis permitted by a police officer without an order of a Magistrate as contemplated under Section 155(2) of the Code.
(5) Where the allegations made in the FIR or complaint are so absurd and inherently
improbable on the basis of which no prudent person can ever reach a just conclusion that there is sufficient ground for proceeding against the accused.
(6) Where there is an express legal bar engrafted in any of the provisions of the Code or the concerned Act (under which a criminal proceeding is instituted) to the institution and continuance of the proceedings and/or where there is a specific provision in the Code or the concerned Act, providing efficacious redress for the grievance of the aggrieved party.
(7) Where a criminal proceeding is manifestly attended with mala fide and/or where the
proceeding is maliciously instituted with an ulterior motive for wreaking vengeance on the
accused and with a view to spite him due to private and personal grudge.”
23. In G. Sagar Suri & Another v. State of UP & Others(2000) 2 SCC 636, this court observed that it is the duty and obligation of the criminal court to exercise a great deal of caution in issuing the process particularly when matters are essentially of civil nature.
24. This court in Zandu Pharmaceutical Works Ltd. & Others v. Mohd. Sharaful Haque & Another (2005) 1 SCC 122 observed thus:-
“It would be an abuse of process of the court to allow any action which would result in injustice and prevent promotion of justice. In exercise of the powers, court would be justified to quash any proceeding if it finds that initiation/continuance of it amounts to abuse of the process of court or quashing of these proceedings would otherwise serve the ends of justice. When no offence is disclosed by the complaint, the court may examine the question of fact. When a complaint is sought to be quashed, it is permissible to look into the materials to assess what the complainant hasalleged and whether any offence is made out even if the allegations are accepted in toto.”
25. A three-Judge Bench (of which one of us, Bhandari, J. was the author of the judgment) of this Court in Inder Mohan Goswami and Another v. State of Uttaranchal & Others(2007) 12 SCC 1 comprehensively examined the legal position. The court came to a definite conclusion and the relevant observations of the court are reproduced in para 24 of the said judgment as under:-
“Inherent powers under section 482 Cr.P.C. though wide have to be exercised sparingly, carefully and with great caution and only when such exercise is justified by the tests specifically laid down in this section itself. Authority of the court exists for the advancement of justice. If any abuse of the process leading to injustice is brought to the notice of the court, then the Court would be justified in preventing injustice by invoking inherent powers in absence of specific provisions in the Statute.”
26. We have very carefully considered the averments of the complaint and the statements of all the witnesses recorded at the time of the filing of the complaint. There are no specific allegations against the appellants in the complaint and none of the witnesses have alleged any role of both the appellants.
27. Admittedly, appellant no.1 is a permanent resident of Navasari, Surat, Gujarat and has been living with her husband for more than seven years. Similarly, appellant no.2 is a permanent resident of Goregaon, Maharasthra. They have never visited the place where the alleged incident had taken place. They had never lived with respondent no.2 and her husband. Their implication in the complaint is meant to harass and humiliate the husband’s relatives. This seems to be the only basis to file this complaint against the appellants. Permitting the complainant to pursue this complaint would be an abuse of the process of law.
28. It is a matter of common knowledge that unfortunately matrimonial litigation is rapidly increasing in our country. All the courts in our country including this court are flooded with matrimonial cases. This clearly demonstrates discontent and unrest in the family life of a large number of people of the society.
29. The courts are receiving a large number of cases emanating from section 498-A of the Indian Penal Code which
reads as under:-
“498-A. Husband or relative of husband of a woman subjecting her to cruelty.—Whoever, being
the husband or the relative of the husband of a woman, subjects such woman to cruelty shall be punished with imprisonment for a term which may extend to three years and shall also be liable to fine.
Explanation.—For the purposes of this section, ‘cruelty’ means:-
(a) any wilful conduct which is of such a nature as is likely to drive the woman to commit suicide or to cause grave injury or danger to life, limb or health (whether mental or physical) of the woman; or
(b) harassment of the woman where such harassment is with a view to coercing her or any person related to her to meet any unlawful demand for any property or valuable security or is on account of failure by her or any person related to her to meet such demand.”
30. It is a matter of common experience that most of these complaints under section 498-A IPC are filed in the heat of the moment over trivial issues without proper deliberations. We come across a large number of such complaints which are not even bona fide and are filed with oblique motive. At the same time, rapid increase in the number of genuine cases of dowry harassment are also a matter of serious concern.
31. The learned members of the Bar have enormous social responsibility and obligation to ensure that the social fiber of family life is not ruined or demolished. They must ensure that exaggerated versions of small incidents should not be reflected in the criminal complaints. Majority of the complaints are filed either on their advice or with their concurrence. The learned members of the Bar who belong to a noble profession must maintain its noble traditions and should treat every complaint under section 498-A as a basic human problem and must make serious endeavour to help the parties in arriving at an amicable resolution of that human problem. They must discharge their duties to the best of their abilities to ensure that social fiber, peace and tranquility of the society remains intact. The members of the Bar should also ensure that one complaint should not lead to multiple cases.
32. Unfortunately, at the time of filing of the complaint the implications and consequences are not properly visualized by the complainant that such complaint can lead to insurmountable harassment, agony and pain to the complainant, accused and his close relations.
33. The ultimate object of justice is to find out the truth and punish the guilty and protect the innocent. To find out the truth is a herculean task in majority of these complaints. The tendency of implicating husband and all his immediate relations is also not uncommon. At times, even after the conclusion of criminal trial, it is difficult to ascertain the real truth. The courts have to be extremely careful and cautious in dealing with these complaints and must take pragmatic realities into consideration while dealing with matrimonial cases. The allegations of harassment of husband’s close relations who had been living in different cities and never visited or rarely visited the place where the complainant resided would have an entirely different complexion. The allegations of the complaint are required to be scrutinized with great care and circumspection. Experience reveals that long and protracted criminal trials lead to rancour, acrimony and bitterness in the relationship amongst the parties. It is also a matter of common knowledge that in cases filed by the complainant if the husband or the husband’s relations had to remain in jail even for a few days, it would ruin the chances of amicable settlement altogether. The process of suffering is extremely long and painful.
34. Before parting with this case, we would like to observe that a serious relook of the entire provision is warranted by the legislation. It is also a matter of common knowledge that exaggerated versions of the incident are reflected in a large number of complaints. The tendency of over implication is also reflected in a very large number of cases.
35. The criminal trials lead to immense sufferings for all concerned. Even ultimate acquittal in the trial may also not be able to wipe out the deep scars of suffering of ignominy. Unfortunately a large number of these complaints have not only flooded the courts but also have led to enormous social unrest affecting peace, harmony and happiness of the society. It is high time that the legislature must take into consideration the pragmatic realities and make suitable changes in the existing law. It is imperative for the legislature to take into consideration the informed public opinion and the pragmatic realities in consideration and make necessary changes in the relevant provisions of law. We direct the Registry to send a copy of this judgment to the Law Commission and to the Union Law Secretary, Government of India who may place it before the Hon’ble Minister for Law & Justice to take appropriate steps in the larger interest of the society.
36. When the facts and circumstances of the case are considered in the background of legal principles set out in preceding paragraphs, then it would be unfair to compel the appellants to undergo the rigmarole of a criminal trial. In the interest of justice, we deem it appropriate to quash the complaint against the appellants. As a result, the impugned judgment of the High Court is set aside. Consequently, this appeal is allowed.
…….……………………..J.
(Dalveer Bhandari)
…….……………………..J.
(K.S. Radhakrishnan)
New Delhi;
August 13, 2010
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