False cases by women on men kept on increasing – they started from 498A, flourished after DV Act was passed in 2005, and unmarried women used ‘technical rape’; after 498A arrests became difficult due to SC judgment of Jul 2014, some married women quickly switched over to IPC 377 (unnatural sex) and even IPC 354 (outraging modesty of woman) on father-in-law or brother-in-law.   Suicide of husbands kept increasing.  21st century is here in full force!

Some people think all this was predicted by some wise guy 5500 years back, but he didn’t tell the ways on how to fight these cases which will happen in 21st century, so here we are making a humble attempt to do the same!

Do you have the fight in you?

Before we proceed to read further on how to fight, shouldn’t we be clear whether we have the fight in us?  Take this quiz now and find your fighter score.  See how the score improves over months as you continue within network of men’s rights activists.

The way of the warrior

Warrior knows the enemy within and the enemy without.  The enemy within can be fear, doubt, impatience etc.

Warrior doesn’t choose to fight unequal battles.

Warrior doesn’t fight at a time and place chosen by the opponent.  He creates his own battles and his own circumstances.

Warrior doesn’t go to the battle unprepared.

Warrior doesn’t blame the circumstances, but instead uses whatever circumstances exist to his full advantage.

Many of the questions in fighter quiz will fall into one of above categories.

Why are you fighting, who are you fighting

I don’t want to fight, I just want peace.

I don’t want to fight, I just want divorce.

I am fighting my wife.

I am fighting injustice.

I am fighting against gender biased laws.

I am fighting for a better society.

I am fighting for a better next generation.

Fight the interim maintenance, forget all other cases including 498A

Golden rule: fight interim maintenance case whether under CrPC 125 or DV Act (or even HMA 24), as if your life depends on it.

All other cases can wait – that includes IPC 498A, 406, 323, 506, 34 and so on.  And wait they will anyway in judiciary.  That's how game goes.  The divorce industry works by delaying things, not speeding them up.  More the delay, the more frustrated husbands become, because not only they have to run around courts, they have to keep paying interim maintenance too in the interim.

Which is why I suggest reducing interim maintenance to a minimum is the best strategy, on top of which everything else can be built up over time.

The dangers of high interim maintenance

1. Wife continues to get interim maintenance every month, so she is least bothered about finishing up cases quickly whether she has filed or you have filed.
2. Only in cases where wife has a boyfriend she may be in a hurry to get a divorce decree.  But that is not true for every case.

Unscrupulous women’s main motivation is extraction and extortion of money.  Many of them are not even bothered about getting a divorce, since probably a married status with maintenance works very well, especially for those with children.  As long as they are able to extract a high maintenance every month, they can coolly wait for husband to lose patience and agree to a lumpsum settlement.

The advantage of low interim maintenance

1. Wife gets Rs 2,500 or 3,500 per month, which is just enough to sustain her.  Her hope of getting an instant lumpsum of 20 to 50 lakh or even more are dashed.  That creates a psychological pressure and damage.
2. Now even if cases get delayed as they will anyway, husband doesn’t have to worry about bleeding a lot of hard earned money every month to parasitic wife.  Paying 2,500 per month is much better than paying 10-15,000 per month.
3. Once interim maintenance is awarded, husband can focus efforts on other things like filing TEP, RTI, collecting more evidence and so on which will help to fight 498A/406 etc.  But instead if he has to pay high interim maintenance, he will again go for appeal or revision thereby wasting more time there.

Most people do the opposite by spending too much time on 498A even after getting bail, by telling everyone about their innocence etc.  Their thinking is that somewhere someone is sitting who is all eager to listen to their story that they didn’t take a penny of dowry and so on, but unfortunately for them they have very little understanding of the divorce industry, which is all tuned not to give a chance to husbands to get rid of any of criminal or even family court cases.

Most important, collect proofs of wife’s working, income, job profiles etc

Often repeated statement by husbands: My wife works but I don't have proof. 

Then make it top priority to get whatever proofs possible.  Without that lawyer and judgments won't help!

Ways to collect proof of wife’s working:

1. Check her facebook profile for any pictures at workplace
2. Check Linkedin profile and other job sites for wife’s profile
3. Any business card in name of wife which shows her name, company designation?
4. Income tax return (ITR), which is one of the best proofs of anyone’s income because usually real income is always higher never lower than what’s given in ITR
5. Try to get details from EPF (employee provident fund) office.
6. Network with other at local city’s weekly meetings.  It’s by such relations that people are able to get details of wife’s job simply by finding someone else who works in same company or who knows someone who can get the proof.  BUT don’t go there with this as the sole expectation.

Write the story, Collect the evidence

1. Write complete details and steps which happened from time of engagement, wedding, honeymoon etc, after marriage, till wife left.  If she left several times and came back, then write all those into a computer document or paper if you don’t use computer much.
2. Why is this important?  With passage of time, we forget many small things which may have lot of importance.  Also, most advocates when approached by husbands, don’t advise them on most crucial things like evidence etc and so people think that merely by filing some objection or filing a divorce/RCR petition, they will be able to get divorce within 1 year or 6 months.
3. Note down all important events like visits out of town, important phone calls etc

Evidence

1. Collect all photographs of wedding, honeymoon etc, other photographs of ceremonies, visits to any places with wife.  When wife says in her petition or affidavit: “I was not given food”, you can show those cheery pictures of your honeymoon to her during her cross-exam to ask why her cheeks were so rosy and plump if she was starving all the time!
2. Also collect any videos.
3. Get copies of all bank statements, credit card statements of your own.  Get wife’s too if you can.
4. Keep record of all SMS.  Use a software to backup the SMS since old SMS may get deleted on some phones.
5. Keep record of phone calls on the phone or itemized billing.
6. Keep all receipts esp cash receipts since there won’t be any other record of cash purchases.
7. Record phone conversations etc from now onwards at least.

There are many useful judgments on this site where maintenance to wife was denied.  For the purpose of educating men (yes, it can seem like an education) on how to deny or reduce maintenance, I have recently published a book on the topic which is available as a eBook readable on all computers and mobile devices.  I hope it will be of use to men who have to face maintenance and other cases.

👉 Added Note 05/04/2023: Click to read this book online for free

How a 498A case proceeds

http://menrightsindia.net/2015/01/notes-and-questions-on-court-procedures.html

Questions about 498A, dowry allegations

Question: In FIR they mentioned expense of marriage Rs 10 lakh and dowry articles of Rs 20 lakh. Where as In DV they mentioned total expense of 20lakh . bills are attached of rs 4 lakhs and estimate slips of 5 lakh.

My view: There is a very potent weapon which may take 1.5-2 years to fructify, but if used it can bring the FIL (father in law) and wife’s party to their knees.  This is called Tax Evasion Petition.  If wife party has alleged gruesome amount of dowry or marriage expenses, which are far above their station in life and income sources, then a tax evasion petition is due on the earning member of their household which is mostly always FIL.  Some FIL have been forced to pay lakhs of penalty to tax department after investigation in tax evasion petition.

Typical sequence of maintenance/DV cases

http://menrightsindia.net/2015/01/notes-and-questions-on-court-procedures.html

Questions about DV and maintenance cases

Note: these questions are real but the dates and other details are changed so the asker cannot be identified.  There are 1 lakh 498A and apart from that maybe 50,000-80,000 DV, CrPC 125, divorce cases filed every year so it’s always possible some case may seem to have a similarity to yours.

Question: Hi, I have DV ,498 filed from her side and divorce filed from my side... 498 charge sheet came on MTH 2014..in DV she has been avoiding since last 1.X years... will all lame excuses... what should I do

My view: Do whatever you can, but don’t leave your work to fight out the DV/maintenance case.  Because THEY WILL keep avoiding to appear for evidence, that’s what all these DV filers do!  The best way is to fight the interim maintenance proceedings fully so as to pay low maintenance, and after that relax for anywhere from 1-3 years till the main petition in DV proceeds at a snail’s pace.

Question: If husband not working then his father laibale for responsibilities of girl

My view: Not yet at least. But with a proposed amendment to Hindu adoptions and maintenance act, even this may become a reality.

Question: I am slapped with 498a,406,34 IPC , DV and CRPC 125 . Got AB in criminal case. While in DV interim of X000/- per month is ordered. Her evidence completed in DV half cross is done half is pending will be on DDMMYYYY . in 125 judge asked her what u want she said divorce. Asked me I said I am ready to keep her. Judge said if she is unwilling u can't force her so anyway u have to pay alimony as per law monthly so it is better u pay 1 time alimony and take MCD.

My view: The fundamental mistake being done here by husband is like this.  Wife has filed criminal cases, and asking for divorce verbally during open court proceedings, but she didn’t file divorce petition actually.  So in a way she filed criminal cases and DV to reach her actual target which is divorce and off course lumpsum settlement.  Actually she has used the right weapons available in the Indian divorce industry and able to achieve the real target of divorce/money without even filing for divorce!

Now husband here says that he wants wife to come back.  What does that tell any reasonable third person not associated with either party? That wife has filed all these cases, she wants divorce, but still husband wants to take her back; so the conclusion is that husband must have tortured her and wife’s criminal and DV allegations must have some truth!

No matter what any lawyer tells you, after wife files DV/498A and such allegations, one should never say during mediation or open court that one wants the wife to come back.  Proceed with evidence, cross-exam, full trial and defeat wife’s cases.  If you followed the advice given on this site, once you have a low interim maintenance award, wife can’t afford to wait for many years living off on a low amount every month, so she will be forced to decide to call the battle off and go for MCD.

Myths about DV and maintenance cases

Question: Does daughter-in-law have right to property of her father-in-law or mother-in-law?

Not really.  She can claim it as residence ONLY IF she has stayed in that house for a sufficient period of time to justify it as a shared household as given in Batra vs Batra SC judgment which defines shared household.

But the way the usual public behaves when facing a complaint from daughter-in-law, it seems the conventional thinking is that somehow the daughter-in-law/bahu is eligible to half the property or one of the properties after 1 day of marriage!

Best piece of lawyer wisdom I have heard is from sister of a husband facing false cases: “Our lawyer says that even your property may be taken by your brother’s wife”

With lawyers like these, who needs _______________

Just in case if you have great urge to file divorce on wife

You can read another post of mine on why Indian men should be very careful before filing divorce.  If that has not dissuaded you, maybe the best course of action would be to do some study of your own in understanding the process of divorce, key judgments, strength/weakness of your evidence/case etc.  The only reason an Indian husband should file divorce is if he is convinced that handling multiple cases like his own filed divorce case, maintenance (HMA 24) filed by wife; and most likely other cases like DV Act, IPC 498a/406 filed by wife — will be much better than living in uncertainty and torture of wife.

To tackle such issues and reduce time and effort of MRAs getting diverted into these issues, I have written the book on topic of divorce for men.  It contains more than 70 judgments on topics of divorce due to cruelty, desertion, adultery, false cases by wife, wife’s adultery, annulment etc.  The best way to approach this book is as a self-study guide (so basically I can wash my hands off  ).  Read the judgments (including my summary, and commentary), and make own conclusions about strength/weakness of your evidence, case (if already filed), and what to expect down the line.  It is available as an online eBook below (Note: available in digital Kindle format only, not as printed book, not as a PDF file):

To know how to purchase and read on Kindle, go to end of this post and read.