06-07-14
NO ARRESTS UNDER ANTI-DOWRY LAW (498A) WITHOUT MAGISTRATE’S NOD: SC
Citing very low conviction rate in such cases, it directed the state governments to instruct police "not to automatically arrest when a case under Section 498A of IPC is registered but to satisfy themselves about the necessity for arrest under the parameters (check list) provided under Section 41 of criminal procedure code".
Section 41 lays down a 9-point check list police to weigh the need to arrest after examining the conduct of the accused, including possibility of his absconding.
Expressing exasperation over rampant misuse of Section 498A, a bench of Justices C K Prasad and P C Ghose said if police arrested the accused, the magistrate should weigh the preliminary evidence against the Section 41 checklist before allowing further detention.
"The magistrate, while authorising detention of the accused shall peruse the report furnished by the police officer in terms of Section 41 and only after recording its satisfaction, the magistrate will authorize detention," the bench said.
It also said that this check-list for arrest and detention would apply to all offences, which are punished with a prison term less than 7 years. Punishment under Section 498A is a maximum of three years but it had been made a cognizable and non-bailable offence, which made grant of bail to the accused a rarity in courts.
But the court singled out the dowry harassment cases as the most abused and misused provision, though the legislature had enacted it with the laudable object to prevent harassment of women in matrimonial homes.
Writing the judgment for the bench, Justice Prasad said there had been a phenomenal increase in dowry harassment cases in India in the last few years. "The fact that Section 498A is a cognizable and non-bailable offence has lent it a dubious place of pride amongst the provisions that are used as weapons rather than shield by disgruntled wives," he said.
"The simplest way to harass is to get the husband and his relatives arrested under this provision. In a quite number of cases, bed-ridden grand-fathers and grand-mothers of the husbands, their sisters living abroad for decades are arrested," he said.
The bench quoted "Crime in India 2012 Statistics" published by National Crime Records Bureau to say that nearly 2 lakh people were arrested in India in 2012 under Section 498-A, which was 9.4% more than in 2011.
"Nearly a quarter of those arrested under this provision in 2012 were women i.e. 47,951 which depicts that others and sisters of the husbands were liberally included in their arrest net. Its share is 6% out of the total persons arrested under the crimes committed under Indian Penal Code. It accounts for 4.5% of total crimes committed under different sections of penal code, more than any other crimes excepting theft and hurt," it said.
"The rate of charge-sheeting in cases under Section 498A is as high as 93.6%, while the conviction rate is only 15%, which is lowest across all heads. As many as 3,72,706 cases are pending trial of which on current estimate, nearly 3,17,000 are likely to result in acquittal," the bench said illustrating the misuse of Section 498A as a tool to harass husband and his relatives.
Describing arrest as a humiliating experience apart from curtailing the freedom, the bench said police have not shed their colonial hangover despite six decades of independence and were still considered "as a tool of harassment, oppression, and surely not considered a friend of public".
The need for caution in exercising the drastic power of arrest had been emphasized time and again by courts but has not yielded results, the court said and tasked the magistrates to check illegal arrests.
05-07-14
OBJECTING TO WIFE WEARING JEANS, KURTA IS GROUND FOR DIVORCE
Mumbai: Objecting to wife wearing Kurta and Jeans and forcing her to wear saree amounts to cruelty inflicted by husband and can be a ground to seek divorce, a family court here has ruled.
The wife pleaded that after marriage in December 2010, her husband did not buy her any clothes and therefore she had purchased Kurta and Jeans from her salary earnings. However, the husband did not allow her to wear them, saying she should wear only sarees.
In her order was passed on June 24, Principal Judge of Family Court, Dr Laxmi Rao, granted divorce to the wife on the ground of cruelty as defined under section 27(1)(d) of Special Marriage Act, 1954.
“In view of the averments made in the petition which have gone unchallenged, it can be said that the petitioner has proved her case, hence, she can be granted divorce as prayed by her. Her plea that she was restrained from wearing jeans and Kurta amounts to cruelty as defined under the Act”, the judge held.
The wife further alleged that her husband and in-laws had asked her to bring Rs one lakh from her house or face dire consequences. They also asked her to quit her job but she had refused to toe their line.
The wife alleged that she was tortured and humiliated as a result of which she suffered mental depression and her life became miserable. She also alleged that her in-laws harassed her on one pretext or the other and warned that if she failed to bring dowry she would face dire consequences.
The wife told the court that on March 15, 2011, she was thrown out of her matrimonial house as she failed to bring the money. Since then till date she is compelled to stay at her parents house at their mercy as she is now jobless.
The petitioner said that her husband had never made attempts to bring her back home in Ambarnath town of Thane district where the couple lived. On the contrary, he sent vulgar SMS messages to her and her parents on their mobile phones in a bid to harass them and damage their reputation.
The wife said she had lodged a police complaint against her husband who worked in a BPO in suburban Malad and earned Rs 28,000 per month
04-07-14
BLOCKING PORN SITES WOULD CAUSE GREATER HARM - CENTRE TELLS SUPREME COURT
Blocking all websites with pornographic content in the country is not possible and it would cause more harm as literary content containing such words would also not be available for public on internet, the Centre told the Supreme Court.
Appearing before a bench headed by Justice BS Chauhan, additional solicitor general KV Vishwanathan submitted that blocking all such websites would cause greater harm. "Everything would be blocked and even good literature would be blocked and it would cause more greater harm," he said.
He submitted that a software has to be installed in every computer for blocking such websites and a direction has to be passed for all computer manufacturers to install software. The court was hearing a petition filed by Indore-based advocate Kamlesh Vaswani who pleaded that although watching obscene videos was not an offence, pornographic sites should be banned as they were one of the major causes behind crime against women.
The petition filed through advocate Vijay Panjwani says that the absence of internet laws encourages people to watch porn videos and over 20 crore porn videos or clippings are freely available in the market, which have been directly downloaded from the internet or copied from video CDs.
The petition states, "The sexual content that kids are accessing today is far more graphic, violent, brutal, deviant and destructive and has put entire society in danger and also poses threat to public order in India. "Most offences committed against women/girls/children are fuelled by pornography. The worrying issue is that the severity and gravity of such images is increasing. It is a matter of serious concern that prepubescent children are being raped," the petition added.
The apex court had on November 18 issued notice to the department of telecommunication (DoT) seeking its response as to how to block websites with pornographic content in the country, particularly those featuring child pornography.