28-year-old Tarun Kumar from Sultanpur Lodhi in Kapurthala of Punjab committed suicide on Wednesday by consuming poisonous substance after uploading a video on social networking site.

In the video, he spoke about his wife and in-laws whom he blamed for his suicide. He also left a suicide note.

Soon after the video was uploaded, Kumar’s friend rushed to his house to save him but it was late and he had already consumed the poison by that time. He was immediately taken to the hospital but could not survive.

He revealed in the video that he was married to Rachanjeet Kaur of Canada, who originally belonged from Dashmesh Nagar in Jalandhar. He claimed that Rachanjeet’s father Rajinder Pardesi had filed a false dowry complaint against him.

He also said that his in-laws were constantly threatening his family every single day and demanding money from them. Kumar accused Rachanjeet, her father Rajinder Pardesi, mother Sukhwinder Kaur and sister Bhavjot Kaur for his death and demanded justice for his parents.

The additional deputy commissioner of police (special branch) Harpreet Singh Mander is investing the complaint.

The Logical Indian Take

Not only men are victims of 498A, even women are. On August 11, a 28-year-old woman committed suicide after going through harassment for two years . She left a suicide note claiming that she and her family were being persecuted by her sister-in-law and the police with an allegedly false dowry case.

Section 498(A), the dowry harassment section of the IPC is one of the law where onus is on the accused to prove their innocence. There have been many other suicides due to the flawed Section 498A of the Indian Penal Code. Due to the misuse of this law, many husbands and their families have had suffered a lot. How many more people must suffer before the law undergoes a revision?

Perhaps if these questions can be answered, not just Tarun Kumar but all the husbands and families wrongly implicated under false dowry cases will be able to breathe easy.

We hope the truth comes out soon, and people stop exploiting the legal system, because everytime this happens, women who are genuinely suffering due to dowry become less believable in the public eye.

The Logical Indian requests lawmakers to look into the law and make amendments so that it is not misused.