Information Booklet on Marriage with Overseas Indians Part 4 4. Fraud and misuse of laws - Reality check and consequences The Indian government has been notified by both Resident Indians and Overseas Indians about the rising number of fraudulent marriages in the recent times. High numbers of fraudulent marriages have been reported from Punjab in India and some areas of Canada. There have been complaints by women stating that the groom had promised to take them to some foreign land but in reality he took huge dowry, left for the foreign land alone and never came back. There are also numerous complaints by NRI husbands and their families that the bride’s family had taken advantage of the stringent Indian dowry laws to falsely implicate them in dowry cases and extort huge sums of money in the name of ‘settlement’. Some women who enter into a marriage against their will or get married willingly and later feel that they do not want to remain in the marriage have tried to get out of marriages by lodging false complaints claiming physical and mental abuse by their husbands and in-laws. Unfortunately, there are no checks and balances in the law. So, the woman can go to the courts and file a complaint under IPC-498A simply based on made up and fabricated stories. Generally, these complaints are ex parte. The man has almost no opportunity to prevent this at the onset. He and his family are treated like criminals and stigmatized/ostracized by the society, forced out of jobs, compelled to hire an attorney for bond application, make multiple court appearances and wait for years before the cases are concluded at a significant financial and psychological burden to them. The number of cases of misuse of the dowry law is far greater than is reported. There are two sides to every story, and while there are genuine cases of abuse and harassment of women for dowry, there has been a growing trend of misuse of dowry laws by vindictive and greedy women and their families. Sadly, the investigating police officers do not ascertain the veracity of the allegations and the legal system, although aware of such gross misuse of laws, does not punish women for filing false complaints.
Posted on: Sun, 14 Dec 2014 13:12:16 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015