Before discussing the section 498a of the Indian Penal Code, 1860, it is essential and very important to understand the concept of marriage. Marriage is a life-long voluntary commitment between a man and a woman. It is a social institution, wherein, both the man and the wife take up each other’s responsibility. The husband is responsible for taking care of the wife and protecting her from all evils and the wife is responsible for taking care of the household. According to Hinduism, marriage is a sacred relationship, a sacrament, and a heavenly pledge meant for proliferation and continuation of family ancestry. It is a promise between two individual to stay together and maintain traditional family values in accord with the Dharma. In the customary Hindu system of marriage, there is no role for the state as marriage remained a private affair within the social sphere. However, today it has been witnessed that marriage has lost its sacredness. Dowry is a major reason for this and women are harassed, killed and ill-treaded by her husband and in-laws for the want of dowry. There are several cases registered everyday in India related to domestic violence and dowry deaths and in order to safeguard women from the brutality done to them by their husbands and his family, in the year 1983, the Government of India passed that section 498A of the Indian Penal Code by amending the code, which deals with “Matrimonial Cruelty”. It was also declared that matrimonial cruelty is a cognizable offence, which is non-compoundable and non-bailable. This has been defined under Chapter XXA of I.P.C. under Sec. 498A. The section 498A states that “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.” The section provides an explanation to the meaning of “cruelty”. According to the explanation provided in this section, cruelty is any conduct done willfully, which is such a nature that can compel a women to commit suicide or cause any kind of harm (mentally or physically), which proves to be life threatening. Another explanation is also provided according to which, any kind of harassment done to the women by her husband or family of her husband with a view of pressurizing her or any person related to her to fulfill illegal demand for any valuable security or property or any person related to the woman is unable to fulfill the demand, constitutes cruelty. Although, this section was added to the Indian Penal Code to protect women from being victims of dowry and domestic violence, in recent times it is seen to be misused by the women. The law made with a good intention to safeguard the actually aggrieved women of the society and provide them justice, it is highly misused by women, especially by the educated women of urban India in order to procure money from their in-laws. Since, 498a can only be appealed by wife/daughter-in-law or her relatives, several false cases have seen to registered in the court of law. It is like a weapon that has fell in the wrong hands and many innocent people suffer because of it. Many women make false police complaints against their husbands and their in-laws owing to strained marriage. These false complaints are registered and add up to the number in the National Statistics of Crime against Women. In majority of cases filed under the section 498A, the demand of huge amount of money (extortion) to settle the case out of the court is seen and blackmailing as well as threatening by the family of the woman who filed the case is quite common. As this section is non-compoundable, cognizable and non-bailable, there have been innumerable instances where, without any investigation, the police has arrested elderly parents, unmarried sisters, pregnant sister-in-laws and even 3 year old children. In these cases gullible family of husband has to go through a lot of mental torture and harassment along with social embarrassment. There are also instances, wherein the innocent husband and her in-laws have committed suicide in the jail due to social embarrassment they have to face. The major flaw in this Indian law is that the new amendment provides "ex wife will get 50% of the inherited properties in addition to 50% of the property of husband". This will further encourage women who are filled with greed to file a case under this section of 498 A. Although very negligible, there are also instances of domestic violence against men and if they register complaint against their wives, the offence is non-cognizable as well as bailable and the man is not entitled to get any kind of redresal. Most men also commit suicide because of mental harassment by their wives but such cases go unnoticed and the convict goes unpunished. In my opinion, section 498A should be amended and it should be made a non-cognizable offence so that an innocent is not punished. Moreover, reframing of law has become very important today to prevent the misuse of it as well as stop wasting the time of both police and court as there are many more important issues that needs to be resolved.
