Certain provisions of the sexual harassment Act are biased and violate the principles of natural justice. This needs to be amended at the earliest. A review of so-called gender-empowering laws is needed

laws are meant to protect. Allegations have to be true, and nobody should complain about being falsely implicated. While the premise of the law is often used to its spirit, there are some which are often not used judiciously. It damages one’s reputation and costs billions not only to the person, but also to the employer and the society.

The concern of a Delhi court in terms of a false complaint against a man has raised many questions. On January 28, Additional Sessions Judge, Virender Bhat said, “Women filing false rape complaints should be punished.” Justice  Bhat’s observation was in a case against a Delhi businessman at the behest of someone who wanted to settle scores with him. Justice Bhat defined the case “as a classic example of how men are being falsely implicated in rape cases to settle personal scores.”

Observing that the accused even after his acquittal has to live with the trauma throughout his life, the judge said, “Time has come, when the courts should deal firmly with the women filing false rape complaints. These women, who turn out to be tormentors and not victims, should be punished under the appropriate provisions of law”.

Metropolitan Magistrate, Shivani Chauhan dismissed the false complaint of a woman in a dowry case and imposed a fine of one lakh rupees.m In 2013, the Delhi High Court observed that women were using fabricated rape cases for personal crusade, harassment, extortion and forcing men to marry them. In December, 2014, the Supreme Court also made a similar observation.

“As many as 31,292 cases of alleged cruelty by husbands and in-laws, filed by women under Section 498A of the Indian Penal Code between 2011 and 2013, were found false or mistake of fact or law, after police investigation,” said Minister of State for Home Affairs Haribhai Parthibhai Chaudhary in the lok Sabha.

A total of 1,207 cases of insult to the modesty of women (Section 509 of the IPC) were found untrue after police investigation. The number of cases under Section 509 has also increased from 386 in 2011 to 482 in 2013. Mr Chaudhary said, “Ministry of Home Affairs had issued two advisories to the States to curb misuse of Section 498A of the IPC”. The Delhi Commission of Women, in October 2014, revealed that out of 2,753 complaints of rape filed between April 2013 and July 2014, only 1,287 were found to be genuine.

The menace is spreading, it has extended to Government and corporate offices. It was said in the lok Sabha that 526 cases of sexual harassment were reported. They are being investigated. In some cases, it was found that the complaints were far from genuine.

However, many from the corporate world say that there are no easy answers, as the definition of sexual harassment is ever expanding and often ambiguous. lawyers also cite several cases of false sexual harassment, where women have taken the easy way out to defame a male colleague. There is also huge resentment over the fact that the law on sexual harassment is biased in favour of women complainants.

In light of this misuse, former Supreme Court Judge, KT Thomas pointed out, “Whenever you make a law very stringent on account of pressures from emotionally surcharged social reactions, there is a real danger of its misuse.” Yet, it’s seldom that an institute or a university acts fast to uncover the truth, as it happened in a recent case at the Indian Institute of Management, Indore, where a nine-member gender sensitivity committee, headed by retired Justice of Madhya Pradesh, Indrani Dutta, found that a lady professor had falsely accused her senior colleague of sexual harassment. Her contract was later terminated.

Recently, four sexual harassment cases examined by the Central Administrative Tribunal were found to be false and motivated. This compelled the CAT Judges, KB Suresh and PK Pradhan, to question certain provisions of the Sexual Harassment of Women at Workplace (Prevention, Prohibition and Redressal) Act, 2013, which encouraged biased outcome against men rather than neutral fact finding. Judges were critical of Section 4 and 7 of the Act, terming them unconstitutional, as it encouraged premeditated bias against men!

National Crime Records Bureau data reveal a dramatic surge in the number of cases being filed under crimes against women category. This should be interpreted as willingness of women to take on their abusers under new gender empowerment laws. However, the low conviction rate of 23 per cent and increasing number of court observations regarding false and motivated cases being filed against men suggest that men are becoming victims of abuse by women.

laws in India have undergone fundamental changes to tackle crimes against women. Unfortunately, these provisions are being abused. There is a need for a dialogue about protecting the falsely accused and having serious repercussions against anyone found filing false allegations. A review of gender-empowering laws is needed.