Suhaib Ilyasi with his 15-year-old daughter, Aaliya. Credit:Simon De Trey-White "There was no limit to my humiliation. I went to get married and found myself in jail. It was unbelievable," he says. He thought he was being singled out for punishment by the gods. It was only much later in his ordeal, after he got in touch with members of the Save the Family Foundation in Delhi, that he realised that thousands of other men had suffered the same experience, albeit without the sensational media attention that his case attracted. Every Saturday afternoon, Dalal, 24, used to travel from outside Delhi to the city's Patiala House Court complex to talk to other men for some ''therapy'' to heal mental wounds, damaged reputations and ruined lives. Like most of them, he became an expert on 498A, the Indian law designed to protect women from being tortured for more dowry by husbands and in-laws after marriage. Under this law, no evidence has to be produced by the woman alleging her husband or family are demanding dowry and the police can arrest him immediately. Bail depends on the discretion of the judge and he is considered guilty until he can prove his innocence. The law is deliberately draconian. One of the great evils of Indian society is women being persecuted, tortured or murdered for dowry, even though giving or demanding dowry has been outlawed for more than five decades.

The latest figures from the National Crime Record Bureau show there were 8391 cases of dowry-related deaths in 2010. One common form is where women are doused in kerosene, set alight and burnt to death. The in-laws then claim the death was an accident. The Bureau's figures for 2010 also show almost 90,000 cases of torture and cruelty towards women by their husbands or family. As he sits in Nathu's, a sweet shop and cafe in Delhi's New Friends Colony, Swarup Sarkar, founder of the Save the Family Foundation, which helps men who have been falsely accused of extracting dowry, is quick to acknowledge the ''monstrosity'' of dowry deaths. But he also says women cannot be allowed to abuse the law to frame innocent men. It is a growing trend in India. Indeed, Sarkar was falsely accused by his own wife soon after their marriage. But in 2008, the courts acquitted him. He says women fabricate the charge for all sorts of reasons: the marriage might be turning sour and she wants to ''punish'' the husband; or it's to settle scores; or if they are heading for divorce, she uses the threat of 498A to extract a generous financial settlement, gain family property or custody of the children.

Sometimes, a woman like Sharma wants to get out of an arranged marriage but lacks the courage to tell her parents and opts for misusing the law instead. Sometimes, a woman has been found guilty of adultery but refuses to face the consequences and turns the tables on her husband with 498A. Even if, given the subservient status of most women in India, the Foundation's complaints of ''rampant abuse'' of the law are taken with a touch of scepticism, members of the legal community vouch for the fact that innocent men are being defamed and harassed. A Supreme Court judge has said that the law, intended to be a ''shield'' to protect women, has been turned into a ''weapon'' to torment men. Another judge described the misuse of the law as ''legal terrorism'' by women. Sadhana Ramachandran, a female lawyer in the capital who used to take up women's cases, has become disillusioned. ''I'm always seeing decent men put in jail by women because they want custody of the children or the house. Strong, successful men turn into mental wrecks fighting these cases because they go sometimes for two decades," she says. Another lawyer, Neeraj Gupta, says the law is a sword of Damocles that sometimes hangs over a married man. "Some women use it to keep the husband under their thumb. They've got their finger on the trigger all the time," he said.

The Foundation's helpline is inundated with calls from distraught men. Fear of being trapped in expensive litigation is universal because 25 million cases currently clog up the judicial system, forcing people to wait at least a decade, and often longer, for a verdict. "In the last nine years, we went to the court at least 320 times and the court was 75 kilometres away. It was tough for my elderly mother and aunt, who were also accused along with me," says Dalal. Some wives do not just accuse the husband, but also his parents and siblings. Pankaj Kumar, 37, who lives in Old Delhi, was accused by his wife just three months after their marriage in 2010 of demanding dowry before she left the marriage. In her complaint at the local station, she also accused his mother and two sisters of harassing her for more dowry. A librarian for a television channel, Kumar spent 11 days in jail before his bail application was heard. "I recorded her on my mobile when she threatened to have me and my mother put away in jail for years. It's going to take time but I am determined to prove her wrong in the courts," he says. Meanwhile, Swarup Sarkar often points out the double standards in dowry law for men and women. "When a woman falsely accuses not just her husband but also his mother and sisters and has them arrested, what about their rights? Aren't they women too? Is it fair to try women without first providing any evidence?" he says.

He was also struck by the fact that, according to the National Crime Record Bureau, the conviction rate in dowry cases was only 2-3 per cent, indicating an enormous number are eventually thrown out by judges. Other crimes in India have a conviction rate of around 40-50 per cent. A nationwide group of 30,000 members with groups in a dozen cities, the Foundation operates a helpline and has published a guide to surviving 498A. Its Bangalore group even runs a shelter for ''abused'' men harassed by wives. "The victims of 498A tend to be successful men. That's why their wives try to extort money out of them by framing them,'' says engineer Niladri Shekhar Das, a Foundation volunteer. ''Poor men, fortunately, don't suffer from abuse of the dowry law because there is no point framing a bus driver or a rickshaw wallah, is there? He added: "Most men are so scared of having their name blackened that they agree to whatever the wife demands to avoid being dragged through the courts. The threat alone is enough to make them grovel. We tell them that if they are innocent, they should not pay their wife a single penny." This kind of advice flows freely during the Foundation's Saturday afternoon sessions on the scruffy lawns of the Patiala House Court complex.

One man tells of how his wife threatened to accuse him of demanding dowry to stop him from divorcing her. Another discovered that his wife's odd behaviour was the result of an affair with her former boss, which began before their marriage. When he asked for a divorce, she threatened him with a false dowry charge. For some men, the allegation of demanding dowry strikes at the very heart of their self-image and causes them great pain. Suhaib Ilyasi, a Delhi television producer who pioneered India's first reality show, was dumbfounded when three months after his wife committed suicide in 2000, her mother and sister had him arrested. "I loved my wife. We met at college. It was a love marriage. Forget asking for a dowry, I even paid the wedding expenses. To be accused of something that I loathe and detest was horrific," he says. Sitting in his small office near the colonnaded Connaught Place in central Delhi, where he is putting the finishing touches to a new film he has made on the abuse of dowry laws, 498: The Wedding Gift, the soft-spoken Ilyasi says it was not his own ordeal that inspired him to make the film, though his experience was bad enough. Overwhelmed by grief over his wife's suicide, he was then falsely accused of demanding dowry, despite the fact that his dead wife's father and brother protested his innocence to the police and the courts. His mother-in-law also accused him of murder. "She wanted to ruin my name so that she could have custody of my daughter," says Ilyasi.

The murder charge has been dismissed as had the child custody case. But his mother-in-law has lodged a case in a ''guardian court''. The case is still pending, as is the dowry charge against him. "Given the strong testimony in my favour, I expect an acquittal in the next few months," he says. Rather than his own experience, it was the 2009 suicide of his dearest friend, Syed Makdoom, a Canadian national of Indian origin, that prompted Ilyasi to make the film. Ilyasi says that while living in Canada, Makdoom met a woman on the internet. He moved to India to marry her and they had a son. Later, Makdoom discovered that his wife had been married four times before, under different names, and each time had accused her husbands under the dowry laws before leaving them. During the dispute over their son's custody, she accused him of demanding dowry and refused him access to his son. "He told me that he half died the day he was accused of demanding dowry,'' Ilyasi says. Ilyasi says Makdoom was extremely attached to his son and despaired at not being able to see him. In April, 2009, he made a video imploring his wife and people in the community generally to help him see his son before putting it on YouTube. ''Then he committed suicide," Ilyasi says.

"I believe we need strict laws against dowry. It is a thousand-year- old custom and there are greedy people in our society. Women are killed and men are cruel. That is the reality. ''But we need to amend the law so that innocent men do not suffer when the law is misused. That is the sole purpose of my film - to stop this ordeal," says Ilyasi. Amrit Dhillon is a Delhi-based writer.