The Age (Melbourne)
24 December 2007

Men say wives use India’s pro-women laws to torment them
By Amrit Dhillon, Delhi

Every Saturday evening, a group of male victims…swap stories about vicious wives tormenting them under India’s pro-women laws.

The men, members of the Save Indian Family Foundation, believe they have
been at the receiving end of vengeful women for long enough and are
campaigning for “men’s rights”.

At the last weekly support meeting, Avinash Datta, 32, related how his wife
threatened to have him and his elderly mother thrown into jail by falsely
accusing him of demanding more dowry after their marriage two years ago….

India’s laws on dowry and domestic violence are meant to protect women
against mistreatment and violent husbands — but increasingly unscrupulous
wives are abusing them to intimidate or blackmail husbands….

“A man can rot for years while the woman lives happily in the home that the
man’s parents built, ” said Mahesh Tiwari, a (happily married) New Delhi
lawyer who works for the Foundation. “And he can go bankrupt fighting the
case in the courts.”….

…Sadhana Ramachandran, a female lawyer in the capital who used to take
up women’s cases, has changed her mind after becoming disillusioned with
women abusing the laws.

“I have known innocent, decent men put in jail by women because they want
custody of the children or the house. I’ve seen men turned into mental
wrecks fighting these cases because cases in India can take 20 years,
ruining your life,” she said.  ([1] Full Story)