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Domestic Violence is a very serious social issue and needs to be dealt with properly. Needless to say, we have many legal remedies available for the same as well. However, the problem with the remedies is that they are unscientific because they do not satisfy the basics of a social remedy. For any social issue to be addressed harmlessly, it is extremely important that there exists a unilateral, unbiased and gender neutral definition of it which forms the basis of any law formed to curb it.
However, if the definition itself is skewed, biased and incomplete, no law formulated on that definition will ever eradicate the evil. It will rather nurture and nourish the evil and allow it to grow to alarming proportions. Same is happening with Domestic Violence. Because of a skewed and incomplete definition its misuse is very easy - leading to innocent accused being trapped by notorious complainants and because its definition is biased many genuine victims would be left high and dry since the current Domestic Violence law protects only females and not males.
Such a situation would lead to the law being used a weapon and would ultimately boost the income of lawyers. Same is happening with the Domestic Violence law in India wherein genuine victims are left high and dry and notorious complainants are trapping, terrorizing, traumatizing and extorting innocent accused.
Now we will have a look as to why the definition is skewed, biased and incomplete. The definition of domestic violence is skewed because it does not specify acts as offences and leaves the final decision as to whether domestic violence occurred or not on to the interpretation, whims and fancies of the complainant.
It is biased because the same action does not define offense uniformly across and within genders. While one may counter argue that because the two genders - male and female - are very different from each other, it may so happen that the definition is not uniform. In that case, it is pertinent to mention here that as human beings both male and female do have a common set of grievances and vulnerabilities.
For e.g. when a wife kills a husband it is projected as a ‘BOLD ACT' from the woman and her crime is justified by projecting her as a LIBERATED VICTIM and when a husband kills a wife the same is projected as a crime by the man the woman is projected as a HARASSED VICTIM. Female murderers are said to be good women whereas male murderers are criminals. Wife killing husband becomes a rewarding option for the woman whereas for men even a failed marriage or not listening to wife is a punishable crime.
The definition is incomplete because apart from being inter gender discriminatory (men are not protected) it is intra gender discriminatory (female relatives of men are not protected). Such a GENDER SELECTIVE DEFINITION of VIOLENCE will only lead to more and more chaos in the society which is happening currently.
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