We are always discussing how India needs female empowerment and laws that protect women. But what happens when the very laws meant to protect women end up wrongly targeting men? While it is certainly true that India’s track record proves the need for stricter laws to curb brutality against women, there are laws in favour of women, such as Section 498A, which have been misused.

Hindu Human Rights

Section 498A pertains to the husband (or relative of husband) of a woman subjecting her to cruelty. Being guilty entails a prison term of up to three years and a fine. Ironically, a woman is at the helm of the fight against its misuse: Deepika Narayan Bhardwaj’s documentary Martyrs Of Marriage is an eye-opener, albeit of a different sort.

“I began researching on this topic due to a personal experience."

"It happened in my family. Since I was a journalist, I thought I am pretty aware of these things. But when it happened, it was shocking. I was personally accused of things that I had never done. We all have a very naïve perspective of courts and judiciary — we think these are the places where people get justice. People told me that you have to fight if you are falsely accused. It was difficult for my family. And, that’s how started researching on this issue and I realised that the situation is pathetic,” says the 31-year-old Gurgaon-based documentary filmmaker.

While researching she found out that the situation is so grim in certain cases that the man, even if innocent, is left with two choices — divorce with a huge sum or a dowry case will be filed. Moreover, India is one country, they say, where you don’t want to get on the wrong side of the law. It could eat up decades of your life.

The 90-minute documentary shows case studies and various legal experts who verify prevalent misuse of this law. Focusing on many victimised husbands, the film premiered in Delhi in October. “The initial research was conducted by visiting courts and police stations.

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It was a little difficult in certain cases to bring family members of the victim (especially in the suicide cases) on camera. It was not difficult to convince them, but it was difficult to bring them on camera because the trauma was too close to home; it was just too emotional for them to talk about a person so dear to them that they had lost,” says the former journalist. Experts like Ashwani Kumar, former Minister of Law and Justice and Justice Shiv Narayan Dhingra, a retired judge with the Delhi High Court, have appeared in this documentary.

Moreover, Bhardwaj has tried to balance this documentary by featuring former Chairperson of National Commission for Women (NCW) to understand her perspective on this issue and why the NCW wants this law to remain. Bhardwaj explains, “I am of the opinion that we need to have gender neutral laws. There should be strong action taken against people who would abuse these laws. Laws should be there to protect women from atrocities, but if people are turning it around and using it to their advantage to extort people or to bring them to a point to give up their lives, lawmakers need to look into it and provide justice to men as well.”

That said, being a woman and standing up for men’s rights has not been easy. She had women messaging her on social media platforms asking her to die. “Women abuse me and say that I am anti-women. But pro-justice doesn’t mean misogyny. If a woman should get justice, so should a man, if he’s been victimised,” she says.