Sunday, October 21, 2012

Misuse of DV/498A - A Myth or Reality ?

Misuse of DV/498A
Recently, I started analyzing the NCRB data, while trying to answer a simple question – ‘Are the laws meant to curb cruelty by husband and in-laws(like DV, 498A) are actually being misused  or is it just a perception ?’
Let me start by putting some statistics from NCRB (National Crimes Record Bureau, India). These data are readily available at http://ncrb.nic.in/ for reference.
Here I have considered the top three crimes in terms of ‘% of Total IPC Crimes’ for the last five years and took an average of them, each individually.
Theft                                                              : 14.84%
Burglary                                                       : 4.3%
Cruelty by Husband and relatives       : 4.08%

Now, for argument sake, lets consider that there were in total 100 total IPC crimes for each type of crime reported in India.
And use the same rates as provided by NCRB to see things in perspective.


Thus if we take average, here is what we get as summary (for every 100 crimes reported).

Crime
FIR
Chargesheeted
Convicted
DV/498A
4.08
3.83
0.78
Theft
14.84
5.82
2.23
Burglary
4.3
1.76
0.62


For clarity sake, lets utilize above data to further deduce some information:

Crime
For Every 100 cases
FIR to CS convertion rate (i.e Police Investigation)
FIR to Conviction conversion rate (i.e Court's Judgement)
DV/498A
100
93.91
19.20
Theft
100
39.25
15.03
Burglary
100
41.05
14.49


Now if we put the above info in a graphical form an interesting fact is revealed.

What does this graph suggests?

1)    While the top IPC crimes like theft and burglary follow a very similar pattern, as far as DV/498a is concerned the graph is completely different.

2)    While for theft and burglary, post police investigation only 40% of FIRs are finally converted to a chargesheet, in DV/498A that percentage is close to 94%.
DOES IT INDICATES THAT POLICE IS UNDER PRESSURE DURING DV/498A INVESTIGATION TO FILE A CHARGESHEET ?

3)    While only 25% of theft/burglary cases are proven to be false in court, a whopping 74% of DV/498A cases are proven false in court.

4)    Interestingly for all the three cases the conviction rate is more or less same, which proves that judiciary is not at fault and neither is the law per se.

Conclusion:-
Had police been able to act effectively without any external pressure, the number of false cases registered could have been reduced and judiciary would have been spared from this huge number of cases which are currently getting piled up in Indian courts.

PRAYER

1)    MAKE PROVISIONS IN OUR LAW SO THAT POLICE IS NOT ALLOWED TO FILE CHARGESHEET IN DV/498A WITHOUT PROPER INVESTIGATION
2)    498A/DV INVESTIGATION NEEDS TO ADHERE TO SOME STRINGENT PROCEDURES AND REGULATIONS.
3)    STRICT PUNISHMENT FOR NOT INVESTIGATING 498A/DV CASE AS PER THE AMENDED PROVISIONS OF LAW.