Open letter to governor of kerala to revamp 498A

Honbl' Governor of Kerala,

Sh. Arif Mohammed Khan,

Subject: Petition to have holistic look at dowry issue, make it gender neutral & strict punishment for false cases

Respected Sir,

I came across the article about "students should be asked to sign a bond, at the time of admission into colleges".This seems like a very myopic view of a huge issue. Do 17-18 year old college students even understand what marriage is? What about those who do not take admission into colleges? Do they have some right to demand dowry? Also, why are you putting a burden on 18 yr olds with things that should have been fixed by people of our age. The only thing we can do with college students is to make them study law a mandatory subject in all streams. Knowledge of law is no longer optional because someone will use it against you if you don't know it.

I would like to propose the following solutions in relation to the dowry issue.
  1. Create a clear definition of Dowry which can sustain in future if claims and counterclaims are made in future, 2 years or 20 years after marriage. Make it extremely clear if sweet boxes, 2100 rs shagun on wedding forms part of dowry or not. Because when things go southwards, the bride family claims all this as part of dowry with an exaggerated list of items.

  2. At time of registration of marriage, make it mandatory that both sides declare that they have neither taken or received any dowry. And registration should happen at most 15 days after marriage.

  3. List of all gifts exchanged between two sides should be documented and signed by both parties and endorsed by the marriage palace, the marriage priest, and 2 witnesses from both sides so that in future, if any dispute arises, this document can be referred to as ground truth.

  4. Make it mandatory for all young couples to visit the police station once every quarter so that both can declare if they are facing any harassment from the other side.

  5. The problem with existing dowry law and section 498A is that it is a draconian law and considered as a strong legal weapon to extort money from the husband's side when marriage fails due to incompatibility. Many women file false complaints and surveys from different agencies over the last 2 decades have found 80-98% of 498A complaints are false with intention to settle scores and harass husband's family. The problem is the remaining 2-20% where a girl has genuinely suffered does not get proper justice because of suspicion due to misuse created by those greedy families. You will NEVER ACHIEVE SUCCESS UNLESS you start strictly punishing those who misuse these sections. And the punishment should be the same as defined for the crime for which they made a false accusation.

  6. Open mental helpline and family counselling centers. Make marriage counselling mandatory for all couples whether they have any conflict or not for the first 2 years of marriage. The counselling should happen every month for the first 6 months where the trained counsellor discusses everything from household responsibilities, money problems, sexual incompatibility etc. In fact, there's a case for doing pre-marital counselling also to improve the odds of success of marriage. Mental counselling would be for those where some abnormal behavior in either spouse is found.

  7. The dowry law needs to be revamped by working with police officials and judiciary who handle a lot of these cases and know ground truth. There are several cases where a poor woman gets married into a kind and rich family  and then harasses them to pay money to her family. These women are called 'gold diggers' and they play a major role in increasing no. of suicides of men due to family issues. There are about 70,000 men who die due to suicide due to such gold-diggers. Where you find one case of Vismaya, there are 5 cases of such men who die due to harassment by the girl's family.

  8. Last but not the least, whatever you do, do it GENDER NEUTRAL. Do not presume that men are bad or women are good. Crime has no gender and there's no crime where accused or victim gender is fixed. Even the heinous crimes like rape or sexual abuse is faced by lot of men but it does not get reported in statistics because IPC does not even consider that possibility which is ludicrous.

  9. You're welcome to debate and brainstorm more on this with me and several other prominent NGOs working in this space. I shall connect you with them if you express interest. I can help you draft the problem statement, review and analyze the data, propose solutions, brainstorm on those solutions and create a law that survives millions of different varieties of cases in the real world. 

Lastly, if you fail to have a holistic look at the issue by removing biases of gender or religion or caste, then know that you're failing your own grandchildren and great grand children because those innocent ones, hoping for a bright future in this great country, depend on you to fix the law so that no innocent ever gets harassed. Recognize that in current 498A, only innocent people get harassed and that's why you have not seen any results in the last four decades due to this law. Justice system defines a country and we cannot be loose in dispensing justice. Protection of the innocent is as important, if not more, than punishing the guilty.

Thanks,
Vivek
Social Activist

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