Laws in India have undergone a fundamental change to tackle the menace of crime against women and to ensure safety, security and dignity of women. This is evident from the stringent provisions of pro-women laws particularly (i) Section 4 of the Dowry Prohibition Act, 1961— penalty for demanding dowry; (ii) Section 498A of the Indian Penal Code — husband or relative of husband of a woman subjecting her to cruelty; (iii) Enactment of the Sexual Harassment of Women at Workplace (Prevention, Prohibition and Redressal) Act, 2013, and changes in other laws.

Unfortunately, these provisions which were passed as beneficial legislations to provide an effective shield to women against harassers, have been abused by some women who use their gender as a weapon, adversely affecting genuine complainants while having larger implications for much-needed gender empowerment in our country.

Misusing the law In several hundreds (if not thousands) of cases, men have become victims due to a systematic abuse of these gender-biased laws. In light of this misuse Justice K T Thomas, former judge of the Supreme Court, pointed out, “Whenever you make a law very stringent on account of pressures from emotionally surcharged social reactions, there is a real danger of its misuse.”

Much has been written about the misuse of Section 498A of the IPC which was introduced with the avowed objective to combat the menace of harassment to a woman at the hands of her husband and his relatives. Nonetheless, because of inherent loopholes within this provision, the reverse harassment and blackmailing grew so much that the Supreme Court in Arnesh Kumar v State of Bihar & Anr (2014 8 SCC 273) remarked that “the fact that Section 498A is a cognisable and non-bailable offence has lent it a dubious place of pride amongst the provisions that are used as weapons rather than a shield by disgruntled wives”. The court consequently directed State governments to instruct police authorities not to automatically arrest when a case under Section 498A of the IPC is registered but first satisfy themselves about the necessity for an arrest.

Low conviction rate Most cases filed under this section have failed to pass legal scrutiny resulting in an extremely low conviction rate. The Madras High Court in its judgment of January 20, 2015, in Thannasi v State pointed out that while chargesheeting in cases under Section 498A, IPC was as high as 93.6 per cent, the conviction rate was only 15 per cent — the lowest across all heads. Going by this ratio, out of 3,72,706 cases pending trial under this section, nearly 3,17,000 are likely to result in acquittal!

The frequent misuse of Section 498A even made the government consider an amendment to the law that would allow compromise and settlement between a husband and wife at the onset of trial in dowry harassment cases. The Malimath Committee report on Section 498A of 2003 has also recommended that the offence under Section 498A of the Code should be made bailable and compoundable.

A similar trend of misuse of other beneficial laws, whether it be laws against sexual harassment at the workplace or rape, have increasingly come to light.

While adjudicating a rape case against one Rohit Chauhan, Justice Kailash Gambhir had observed that penal provisions on rape are often being misused as a weapon for “vengeance and vendetta” to harass and blackmail male friends by filing false cases to extort money and to force them to marry.

“Many of the cases are being reported by those women who have consensual physical relationship with a man but when the relationship breaks due to one reason or the other, women use the law as a weapon for vengeance and personal vendetta to extort money and sometimes even to force the boy to get married to them,” the learned judge had said.

In a recent order by the Central Administrative Tribunal (CAT) while dealing with four cases of sexual harassment at the work place — all of which turned out to be false and motivated — the tribunal went on to question certain provisions of the Sexual Harassment of Women at Workplace Act, 2013, which encouraged a biased outcome against men rather than neutral fact-finding. The CAT bench comprising judges KB Suresh and PK Pradhan said, “Section 4 and 7 of the Act can be termed as unconstitutional because once an adjudicatory body is to be determined as slanted in its sway; it destroys the fairness concept embedded in adjudication.”

Section 4 of the said Act makes it compulsory that at least two members of the internal complaints committee, who are required to deal with sexual harassment cases in the workplace, must be “committed to the cause of women”. Further, the local committee constituted under Section 7 of the said Act requires its members to be chaired from among “eminent women from the field of social work and committed to the cause of women”.

Unwelcome bias The tribunal said that “if members of the committee of the adjudicatory committee are to be committed to an ideology, their mental frame will be such that it would give an opportunity for unwelcome bias and their finding also will be in consonance with their personal commitment”. While highlighting the misuse of the Act, CAT termed its provision “double-edged”.

It is clear that in their overzealousness, framers of these Acts unwittingly made provisions, which encourages findings of ‘guilt’ of an accused rather than the discovery of truth, even if the complaint has been filed with malicious intent. Consequently, there is very little a person falsely implicated can do in such circumstances as there is no specific law in India to deal with the abuse of men by women.

The biased provisions in laws enacted with the high purpose of providing an effective shield against harassment and abuse have become a double-edged weapon for reverse harassment and blackmail. If the trend continues, the biggest victim will only be genuine complainants and the larger cause of women empowerment. No one wants that to happen!

The writer is the founding partner of Titus & Co

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