Marriages in Hindu culture are considered as sacred, they are based on mutual understandings, respect, regards, and love between the man and woman. These matrimonial conduct are to be governed by judicial laws keeping in view the social changes in society.
Cruelty is one such misbehavior that affects the mutual understanding between man and wife, which eventually ruins their relation and finally divorce. Every married couple in day to day conduct involve in tom and jerry fights, small quarrels but this does not amount to cruelty. To prove the ground of cruelty the quarrel should be weighty and grave so that the judiciary could conclude that the couple couldn’t live together for the rest of their lives. It may be words, gestures, silence, or violent acts i.e., it must be more serious than ordinary wear and tear of married life.
Furthermore, as it is a male-driven society the word cruelty is often thought to be associated with males against females. It is our society’s tendency that if any rape case or sexual harassment case, or any such case which affects the women’s right comes in limelight, we immediately without knowing the facts and figures start criticizing the male. Hats off to our 4th pillar of democracy, the media, because their talent for portraying the case is tremendous. But we never see the female version of any case because in our society females were being unnecessary protected under a label of ablaa nari, vulnerable creature, less privileged sect of society, however, this cannot be true always. In the present scenario, women are given ample of rights and liberties for their empowerment that in future may be male sect protest for their rights.
Anyway this empowerment given to females is misused now and then frequently. Chapter XX and XX-A of IPC, 1860 deal with an offence relating to marriage. This is very unfortunate that the Indian laws on cruelty were made for protecting women’s rights but these laws itself are being used against men by way of false and frivolous complaints. These loopholes being used as weapons to misuse law. For example in Binod v. Sophy, 2019 where the divorce was granted by Kerala high court after observing that husband and his family were being harassed since long time by filing false complaints itself amount to cruelty.
There are certain cases where the supreme court had granted alimony to the wife after the husband has won the case of cruelty by the wife. Section 125 of Crpc, 1973 regulates the concept of alimony which states that wives getting alimony to maintain her family and child but if the situation doesn’t fall under mentioned situation then-husband is not liable to pay any alimony:
- The ex-wife is liable to get alimony if she is not earning herself or there is no means of income, but if she is qualified and without any justified reason she is refusing to work to earn herself in such case limited period alimony is granted until she finds a job.
- If ex-wife is in relation with another man, whether planning to get married or not. Thus wife should be clean-handed to claim for maintenance.
In a landmark case of Bhagwan Dutt v. Kamla Devi 1975, it was held that the wife’s income has to be taken into account while determining the amount of maintenance. It is neither the absolute right of a neglected wife to get maintenance nor absolute liability of husband to support her in all circumstances. Thus men can also demand alimony from his wife if the wife is financially well off and earning more than husband under section 24 of HMA which makes both the spouse liable to claim.
There are certain sections in the Indian Evidence Act, 1872 which protects men or husband from harassment and empowers to file a counter case against wife or women like
- U/s.191 giving false evidence
- U/s.192 fabrication of evidence
- U/s.196 using false evidence knowing it to be false
- U/ s.209 dishonestly making false claims in court
- U/ s.211 false charge of offense made with intent to injure.
But there is law but there’s no justice at least for married men who are falsely accused.
In the end, after seeing such injustice in the veil of women empowering laws courts should award stringent punishment to provide a deterrent effect in minds of opposition parties. In Hindu culture giving of gifts to women during marriage known as stridhan a custom and which is indeed a property owned by women herself but her in-laws use it with a bonafide intent and thus in some cases women with salaried intent file a false case of dowry against in-laws. It is incontestable that women are subject to cruelty but at the same time laws should be made which provide injustice to men or in other words the laws should not be made wide enough that results in misuse as it is rightly said that lie from women is the truth until proven otherwise and truth from men lie until it’s proven.
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