Woman, 'rapist' urge high court to quash plaint

In a rare instance, a rape victim and her alleged rapist have urged the Bombay high court to quash the complaint of rape as it is creating a "hurdle in their relationship". First information Report (FIR) was filed by the 19-year-old woman (name withheld) against Suyog alias Bunty Rathod on June 6, 2008 at Solapur alleging that he had raped her several times over a few years, the last of it being on May 5, 2008.

Rathod was booked by the police under section 376 (punishment for rape) of the Indian Penal Code. Although a sessions court in Solapur refused to grant him anticipatory bail, he secured bail from the high court.

At the hearing of the application on Monday, Rathod's advocate told the court that the woman, a police constable, had herself sent a letter to the commissioner of police stating that she did not wish to pursue the complaint anymore. Moreover, the advocate said that the woman had filed an affidavit stating that she and Rathod were still in love and have decided to get married.

The affidavit filed by the woman in August last year stated that the complaint she had filed against Rathod was due to a "misunderstanding" between them, he was still in touch with her and they had agreed to get married despite strong opposition from their families.

Rathod's petition stated that the woman filed a complaint because she got an impression that he would marry someone else despite maintaining physical relations with her.

Her affidavit further stated that she and Rathod had a "very good relationship and want to maintain the same". The woman, who still claims to be in love, said that if Rathod is prosecuted based on a complaint filed by her, it will come in the way of their relationship.

The court, however, expressed its desire to speak to both the complainant and the alleged rapist, who she now says never committed rape and wanted to marry her.

"If there is genuine love, nothing can separate them," justice Dharmadhikari remarked. The court has directed the couple to come before it on January 19.

Source : http://www.dnaindia.com/mumbai/report_woman-rapist-urge-high-court-to-quash-plaint_1333731

Man acquitted of raping woman between theatre seats

Man acquitted of raping woman between theatre seats

Court says 'quite impossible to ravish a woman in a space of six inches', besides purported victim's testimony was full of loopholes

On November 24, 2008, Uttekar along with the purported victim Sonali Wagh (name changed) went to Ghatkopar's Shreyas Talkies for the 12 noon show of the Salman Khan-starrer Yuvvraaj.

image used for representation only

According to Wagh's statement, they sat in the rear seats of the theatre, while a few other patrons occupied the front rows of the hall. 

Wagh testified that during the movie, Uttekar pushed her down between two rows of the seats and raped her in that space. 

In his defence, Uttekar argued that it was impossible to have sex in such small confines and that if an act of forced sexual intercourse had taken place, the victim would have sustained bruises and injuries. 

Though Wagh told the court that she had suffered injuries to her waist and left arm, those injuries – along with signs indicative of rape – were not reflected in the medical report. 

Also, the theatre's booking clerk Thomas D'Souza testified that the distance between the two rows (Y and Z) was around 6 inches only. 

"It is quite impossible to lie on the back, between the two rows. Therefore, the victim's contention that Uttekar ravished her within that space does not inspire confidence," Sessions Judge V S Murkute remarked.

The court also took note of Wagh's conduct after the alleged rape, and observed that she not only watched the movie till the end, but also accompanied Uttekar to a restaurant, and thereafter to a public garden where he proposed marriage to her. 

On Wagh's claim that she screamed for help, the court stated that it was 'quite impossible' that no one in the theatre heard her cries. 

"Also, it is not her contention that Uttekar had gagged her mouth, and therefore she was free to shout, and raise hue and cry to attract others' attention; but she did not do so," the judge noted.

The court observed that Wagh's father learnt of the incident the next morning when Wagh narrated it, but the complaint was registered only on the third day after the incident. 

Evidence before the court also showed that Uttekar and Wagh had an affair, and that their marriage was planned, but could not take place due to family opposition. Wagh even testified that she was unwilling to lodge a complaint against Uttekar, but did so after her parents' coerced her to. "She has further admitted that she has deposed in court as per her mother and sister's insistence. Her testimony does not inspire confidence," the judge remarked, acquitting Uttekar.

source : http://www.mumbaimirror.com/article/2/20100112201001120230084338067743d/Man-acquitted-of-raping-woman-between-theatre-seats.html#ftr2

Boys need special focus

Boys need special focus In a world of female empowerment, reinventing men has to begin from boyhood R Jagannathan The end of the Noughties is a good time to think about boys and men. Contrary to what is articulated in the media and by card-carrying feminists, boys need more attention than girls — not because they are special, but because society has more to lose for boyhood gone wrong. When it comes to girls, we know what has to be done: allow them to soar. But do we know what to do for our boys apart from bringing them down to earth? Do we know how to deal with the crisis of manhood? The issue is aggravated by the deluge of daily images of dysfunctional men: from rapists and molesters of various kinds to the Rathores who use positions of power to subvert the law, from boys who learn to murder for money to perverts who stalk potential victims on social networking sites. Reverse sexism is not helping. You may not see gender-insensitive headlines like "Boys do better at IITs," but "Girls top SSC rankings again" is par for the course. In short, men have very few positive images to build a reworked future where women will claim their rightful share and men have to do most of the adjusting.  To be sure, men are what they are partly because early human society saw an evolutionary advantage in giving males and females different roles. These roles have now calcified into tremendous advantages for men, giving them unintended power. It has also left them with huge handicaps in dealing with the world as it is evolving now, where networking skills and emotional intelligence are key success factors. Power corrupts. Male power has, over the past few centuries, been used as much to subjugate as to protect. It is time to change that —and the best way to do that is by focusing on how we need to bring up our boys so that they grow up to be the kind of men we need. Demonising men may be a useful way for damaged women to vent, but it is not going to get us anywhere. To understand why men need to change, we also need to acknowledge evolution's impact on male development. Fact 1: No species apart from humans has given only one gender extraordinary dominance over the other. Why did this happen? Answer: unlike humans, power is more equal between the sexes in most species. Have you ever heard of rape in another species even though all males in all species have the same biological urges? Probably not. Equality of power doesn't mean equal physical strength. In all species, the male is bigger than the female. But in no species is the female incapable of defending herself well enough to deter over-aggressive males. Why did this happen only in humans? Fact 2: Humans began to dominate other species because specialised male functions helped generate long-term wealth and consolidated power. Males developed physical strength, risk-taking abilities, and aggression. Females developed the ability to empathise with other humans and built networking capabilities. Tribes with specialised gender roles grew stronger and from this realisation it was just a hop, step and jump away to formal patriarchy and male dominance. Fact 3: Women, especially Indian women, have played a major role in making men what they are. The typical Indian mother, trying to make up for the emotional deficit in her relationship with her spouse, ends up building up her son as surrogate to step into the void. (While psychologist Sudhir Kakar has made this point several times, a good recent book to offer insights in this area is Shaifali Sandhya's Love Will Follow). This kind of toxic maternal affection and high emotional expectations permanently scars boys and as they develop their own sexuality, they sometimes develop both deep bonds and deep anxieties about their mothers. Later on, they tend to see women only as mothers or whores, not equal sexual and emotional partners. This is the mindset that sometimes creates rapists and molesters even while ruining spousal relationships. All these factors have taken a heavy toll of men. The vast majority of ordinary, decent men have limited awareness of their own emotional needs and an even poorer ability to communicate. Half their human faculties have been sacrificed to the cause of evolution. Today, the relentless cycle of evolution is moving in the direction of female empowerment not only because it is the right thing to do, but because unbridled male power is damaging all of earth. The power imbalance is leading to constant conflict (global war-mongering), and destructive self-aggrandisement (the crash of the global financial system is a male greed issue). As a society, we have a lot of things to fix. Top of the agenda is a focus on boys and their developmental needs — mental, physical and emotional, including gender sensitisation. A significant chunk of investment must be made in counselling parents and schools, for this is where many innocent little boys become transformed into problem men. There is no time to waste. Source : http://epaper.dnaindia.com/epapermain.aspx?edorsup=Sup&queryed=40&querypage=13&boxid=30733280&parentid=108046&eddate=01/07/2010

Mujhe Meri Biwi Se Bachao... MUMBAI MIRROR

Mujhe Meri Biwi Se Bachao...

Five Mumbai men form NGO, Child's Right and Family Welfare, to protect men who are harassed by their estranged wives

By Deeptiman Tiwary

Posted On Wednesday, January 06, 2010 at 03:18:38 AM

In August last year, five men whose children were locked in a custody battle had approached the then DGP Maharashtra S S Virk with a representation saying that if they were not given proper access to their children, they would be forced to kidnap them. They wanted the custody and child access laws, dowry harassment laws and domestic violence laws to be fairer to men. Prashant Sawant, Vilas Adik, Deepak Devrukar and Manish Katira who formed the NGO four months ago Five months on, the group has come a long way towards achieving that goal. The members have not only established an NGO, Child's Right and Family Welfare, but also launched a helpline (8108271975), held seminars, made representations to higher ups in the government and now plan to participate in the January 17 Mumbai Marathon to highlight the issue.  Video of 'violence against men'     Purushottam Mahajan, a member of Child's Right and Family Welfare, recently uploaded a 30-minute video on YouTube, which he says shows his estranged wife beating him in front of their son (circled). Their enthusiasm to hit at the roots of what they call unfair laws, however, has literally brought family feuds on the Internet. A man, also a member of the NGO, when accused of dowry torture by his wife, uploaded a 30-minute video of him allegedly being beaten up by her on YouTube. The video that has no sound, shows a woman slapping and kicking 44-year-old Purushottam Mahajan. It later shows them animatedly discussing something even as a child looks on. Mahajan, who claims to have worked with Subhash Ghai as an assistant director, says he shot these video clips through a hidden camera over a period of three months when the couple lived together. Mahajan says the woman in the clipping is his wife and the child is their nine-year-old son. Says Mahajan, "We got married 10 years ago, but the relationship soured within a year. In July 2008, we separated and are now locked in a divorce and custody battle. I had shot these clips in the months preceding our separation as no one would believe when I said I was being beaten up at home. People advised me to collect evidence of the same and so I set a spy camera in the house that ran 24 hours. Later, my wife registered a case of dowry torture against me with Dindoshi police. I even showed the video to police but they have not taken any action against her." Mahajan's wife was not available for comment despite repeated attempts. Sandeep Kedia, president of the NGO, says, "Despite all evidence, law enforcing agencies invariably take the woman's side. The law is biased against men.  "I want to ask, aren't the man's mother and sisters women too. They also get harassed when a woman slaps a false dowry complaint against her husband. We want the courts to suo motu prosecute those who lodge false dowry complaints." The Child's Right and Family Welfare organisation is vociferous about atrocities committed by women. A recent power-point presentation made by the NGO in association with Indian Family Foundation shows a young woman slapping a man. The picture is captioned: "You just saw a legally unrecognised domestic violence (sic)."  The presentation also compiles detailed data on women arrested for dowry torture as compared to those arrested in other sections of the Indian Penal Code, male suicides in marriages, acquittal rate in dowry cases and various other statistics. It also demands a Commission for Men to be set up by the government for protection of a husband's family members in dowry cases. Another member of the NGO, said, "Every Saturday we hold a meeting near the Bandra Family Court where we help people like us by providing them legal counselling. Every week we receive close to 50 calls from harassed husbands locked in child custody battle. The courts always favour the mother in such cases. The maximum a husband gets is two hours in 15 days to meet his child and that too in court premises. That translates to not more than 48 hours in a year. How is a child ever going to have any affection for his father like this?" Adds Kedia, "It's not fair to the fathers... They are also emotionally attached to their children and too have the right to nurture them. We want that two separated parents be given equal access to the child and that fathers be given the right to take their child home during major festivals. To create awareness we are also participating in the marathon."  source : http://www.mumbaimirror.com/index.aspx?Page=article&sectname=News%20-%20City&sectid=2&contentid=2010010620100106031838345b194e3f