what is solution

In the current situation, the law is becoming a tool for the well-heeled and well-educated class but not reaching those who actually need it, according to Gokul. "The women who actually get physically abused mostly belong to the lower strata of society and they rarely make use of this law," he says.According to the victims, our system is not equipped for such law either. "The policemen involved know in most cases that they are dealing with a false case. But they go with whoever offers them bribes. There should be a proper investigation in each case before the arrest, and also there should be a fear of punishment in the event of misuse. As of now, if the charges are found to be false, the accused are just acquitted," says Sadhana.According to Lekha, a blanket ban on dowry will only lead to misuse of law. "Voluntary dowry should be made legal. Whatever is given as dowry should be recorded, together with the property or assets have been bought with it," she says. A few feel that laws should be made gender neutral. "This would ensure that the current laws cannot be held as a threat by one gender over the other. The original intention of the laws was to protect women. But today, because of one woman, there is a potential to falsely implicate more than one woman under these laws. Why is it that only a daughter-in-law has the right to law? What if the daughter-in-law is herself a perpetrator of domestic violence?" asks Kaushik C, yet another victim.However, there are also those who feel that the issue is being blown out of proportion. Says Preetha K K, a legal expert, "There is no strong law other than 498A to protect women from violence. Changing it for the sake of fear of misuse is ridiculous. People are conveniently forgetting the umpteen number of cases where the boy's family takes away the entire dowry amount, buys property with it in their own names, and throw the girl out of the house. The issue here is that genuine cases are not reaching the court