As it is in the West, so it is in India only worse.

This article reports on Indian men's protests on International Men's Day (DNA India, 11/20/09).  In Mumbai, men and women (often second wives) took to the streets holding signs and shouting slogans like these:

"Indian male - hapless animal"; "women empowered men unpowered"; "husband not an ATM machine", "options for Indian male - be henpecked or handcuffed"

According to them, Indian family law is much the same as it is in various western nations.  There as here, they say, dads are seen only as a source of funds and can be driven out of the lives of their children by their wives who need little more than allegations of abuse to do the job.  And the Indian Domestic Violence Act has a "Women Only" sign on its door.

But worse is the infamous Section 498A to the Indian Family Code.  No less of an authority than the Indian Supreme Court has called procedures under Section 498A "legal terrorism."  Read about Section 498A here.

Astonishingly, under Section 498A, a woman can not only have a man jailed based solely on her own allegations, she can have his family jailed along with him.  Into the bargain, once in the slammer, he can't get out because a charge under Section 498A is "non-bailable."  To say that that gives women a leg up in divorce actions is to understate the matter considerably.

And what's true of domestic divorces goes double for international ones.  So if an Indian husband and wife live abroad and she wants a divorce, she can just grab the kids, decamp to India, file a 498A action and then a divorce case.  Presto! the man finds that if he sets foot in the country, his second step will be into jail, from which there's no exit prior to trial.

Not only that, but, as Bunty Jain, co-founder of the Indian Family Federation explained,

"Most cases where section 498A is invoked turn out to be false. Baseless allegations are made against men to extort money from them, and the law and the police support women, without making complete inquiries. The laws are wife-centric, not even woman-centric, because the husband's mother or sister is not taken into account," he said.

Sound familiar?  If it does, so will the parts dealing with alimony and child custody.

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