Fight against Injustice - Indian Penal Code (IPC) Section - 498a

There is one aspect even the lawyers or parents on either side don’t catch on much. General depression arising out insecurity (due to lack of knowledge or insight into the husband’s world, especially if NRI) and out of bad treatment by parents (parents don’t start using their daughters for money out of the blue… there must be a long pattern of treating their daughter as a burden to be unshed) lead to a complicated psychological condition in many brides, called the Borderline Personality Disorder. Am not saying all brides are depressed or all have BPD but you must wonder what makes a person drive to an ultimate impulsive act of putting her lifestory in police books and harming her husband irreparably. Vengeance alone is not enough. It prepares the grounds. Her mental condition, commonly equated with what psychologists call self-destruction, help pull the trigger. You know this when her craziness wears out in a few days and she start begging you to take back, that she made a mistake in filing the case, etc. etc. Remember, all of that comes with a lot of lying and making you believe her emotionally.

So how do you deal with a person like that? It is not just withdrawing the liberties… for the withdrawal leads to the craziness of 498A or any other equally hurtful dramas. For those who live with that condition, it is recognized that it feels like “walking on egg shells” all the time with this person. There is a good book “I hate you, Don’t leave me”. Don’t be over enthusiastic in applying the criteria to your spouse. Not all fit the bill, but many do especially in the NRI situation where their dormant mental condition is flared by the separation that triggers the fear of abandonment.

Keep in mind filing a 498A is either a sign of an ultimately clueless person with enormous psychological issues or a very rational/brilliant person who wants to harm you real bad. In either case, you are not dealing with a person who values relationships as something sacred to be worked on. They have grown up all their life in taking relationships for granted. So, there is nothing you can do make this person understand “taking away the liberties” short of they going through knocks for many years, realizing how they were used by their parents to make money, how the parents failed but they destroyed their marriage (and even if they have another guy lined up, their conscience will chase them all their life). The only punishment you can give to a woman like that is to let her get old begging for you and let her file complaints against her own parents if she still claims she did not want to put you in jail.

In the end, once the 498 is filed the issue is simple. This is a person who wanted to jail you. If you give them a chance, they get the signal to respect you even less and hurt you hard anytime they don’t get their way.


Sanjay