A marriage — arranged, love, or the in thing ‘arranged love’ — ought to mirror a beautiful relationship, considering it derives from an institution that, as per best available evidence, is at least about 4,350 years old. The first recorded evidence of marriage ceremonies uniting one woman and one man dates from about 2350 BC, in Mesopotamia. In India, familial bonds are strong and marriage, as a social institution, continues to be sacred; though many aberrations have crept in due to disintegration of the joint family system, preponderance of unstable nuclear families, and modification of the very concept of marriage as a union of a man and a woman.
The Pioneer’s Tejal Sinha takes a close look at certain aberrations that have crept in present-day marriages that do not have traditional checks and balances, but are replete with pitfalls attributable to online misrepresentations.
Until a few years ago, good old family connections played an important role in arranged marriages, in which the families of the prospective bride and the prospective groom were brought together for matchmaking. Even though the suggestions and recommendations came from family members, the onus was on parents to verify the antecedents of the bride and bridegroom. While most parents preferred unobtrusive enquiries, there were others who hired private investigators to conduct background checks. Such traditional checks and balances have made way to newer means of matchmaking and background checks over the last few decades. The overall marital process has undergone significant changes, virtually moving online entirely.
Commercially speaking, one of the largest sectors in India is the wedding industry; yet, it also contributes significantly to mounting cases of fraud now. Before the advent of the internet, word-of-mouth was the primary method employed for wedding searches. Thanks to the pervasive influence of the internet today across the world, looking for a ‘good’ husband or a ‘good’ wife is also being done online these days.
Going by reports of downright cheating, swindling, deceptive matchmaking, and the like; it looks like marriage is no longer the start of life happily ever after; rather, it has become the herald to a life unhappily ever after! While there have been many sorts of scams, marriage scams are not far behind when it comes to the stakes involved.
A marriage scam is a fraud that is done by one party who gets married for their own benefits, including financial ones, but does not share any sort of romantic bond or relationship with their partner. Initially, there was a time when men were the ones who turned themselves into scamsters to dupe women and extract money. We have come across many such cases, right? But now it seems like things have taken a drastic turn; for, these days, it is not women but men who have turned out to be victims.
Marriage scams not gender-centric
Marriage scams are not gender-centric; both genders are equally capable of pulling off a scam on the other party. In one such case, Sanjay (name changed), a Hyderabad-based techie, got married through a community WhatsApp group. Within just two days of the marriage, his wife began creating chaos at his home and showed no intention to maintain any sort of relationship with him. While she was travelling back to her hometown in Chhattisgarh for a ritual, Sanjay and his family found that his wife had stolen all the gold ornaments given to her by Sanjay and his family. When confronted, she started arguing with them. Later, when the family picked her up from her hometown and was returning by train, his wife deboarded the train and boarded another Delhi-bound train. After a few days, she went back to her hometown. She and her family then filed a false dowry and mental harassment case against Sanjay.
“I have known from my experience that there are women who go through a series of marriages to extract money and properties. There have been cases in which I have come to know where the brides have taken off all the gold immediately after the wedding. Though these cases are not pretty common, I have met people who have been through scams,” shares Shonee Kapoor, a men’s rights activist. He highlights that all the laws with benevolent provisions for certain groups such as Scheduled Castes, women, children, transgender, etc. are prone to misuse. Thus, it is very necessary that whenever a benevolent provision of law is made, there is mechanism also to prevent its misuse so that only genuine victims can come forward and get relief.
NRI marriage scam is on the rise
Recently, in one of the cases, within a week of getting married, Sukesh (name changed), an electronics engineer from Toronto, was told by his spouse that she had married him only for a visa and had no plans of terminating the relationship she had with her paramour. After he refused to process the immigration formalities for his wife, she filed a false dowry case. Unable to bear the harassment, he had to pay Rs 15 lakh to settle the case.
According to Shonee, there is a new phenomenon in states like Punjab, Haryana, Telangana, Andhra Pradesh, and especially Gujarat. A lot of people from these states are living in western countries.
These men generally come back to their roots to get married to an Indian, but when these women get married and go to a foreign land, they immediately abandon the guy and seek asylum. “I have come across people who have gone through such kinds of scams, and we are trying to help them out because this is a new scam that has come out. There have been multiple such cases in Telangana and Andhra. The Government of India does not have any data regarding this, but on average, I get 7-10 calls that are about the misuse of the law.”
Scams and false cases
In another such case that took place in one of the Telugu states, a girl named Sushri (name changed) married 12 men just for the money.
Ramesh Pittala Mudiraj, a Telangana High Court advocate, had come across this. He shares that even women, through some dating apps, search for men with rich backgrounds to get married and do not get physical with them but rather ask them only for money. With no emotional, mental, or physical bond, the boy seeks divorce, and they finish the marriage without cooperating in any physical relationship or taking care of the family. In this way, they are earning money. “False cases of dowries or forceful physical relations have also been routinely filed by these women,” states Shonee, adding, “The misuse has been prevalent for long, and even the Supreme Court long back in one of the judgments said that the misuse of law is equivalent to ‘legal terrorism’, that is the word that it has used. It has time and again asked the government to make it liable so that some of the misuse could be prevented. But unfortunately, such instances of misuse are still very prevalent, and nothing has been done to prevent that.” On paper, he shares that there is a law, but “it is a very toothless law called forgery or malicious prosecution. However, the court or police, if they find the complaint to be false, can take action, which is under IPC 182 for police and IPC 211 for court, but for a private citizen to go and make a make a complaint against misuse, it is a very difficult task.”
Along with other marriage scams, matrimonial scams are also on the rise, especially during the wedding season. Advocate Ramesh highlights that there has been an increase in the number of cases in the past couple of months. “These scams are happening with both parties, but society shows mercy on the girls but doesn’t have the same kind of empathy for the men. Women are given empathy since they cry and try to victimise themselves. Men, on the other hand, don’t primarily share their problems; thus, men are blamed. As per the Indian Constitution, Article 14, all are equal before the law, and there should be no gender bias or partiality between men and women. The victim is a victim, be it a male or a female.”
In case the police are not ready to file an FIR, he also explains, “Police or people first laugh and defame these men in society. When the local police are not responding, you are free to move to the higher authorities, even to the SP level, and make a written complaint to them. Along with them, the police station falls under this jurisdiction, and they are supposed to give one more written complaint to the district collector as well. He will be issuing a notice to the district police department about not going with legal proceedings. They will not only file a complaint and take action but also provide an acknowledgment to the victim.” On average, he shares that while 70 per cent of the cases are when men dupe women, the rest of the 30 per cent of cases are of women cheating.
Meanwhile, ET Manjusha, a senior High Court advocate, shares that she has personally received over seven such cases in the past six months. In these cases, she explains, “These women get married and later say to their spouse that they are not interested in the marriage or have been forcefully pushed into the marriage. There are also cases where they body shame the guy and try to force themselves sometimes on people who are quite mild and innocent for them to get the financial benefits. Unable to get the emotional support and compatibility, apart from the physical bond, the guy and his family go up with an annulment of marriage.”
According to the Hindu Marriage Act, they have void, valid, and invalid marriages. Any marriage that is performed with the consent of both parties is a marriage. However, if the marriage is performed without the consent of either of the spouses, then that cannot be considered a marriage, which becomes an invalid marriage. Meanwhile, the annulment of marriage needs to be filed within one year of marriage. When you find out that the other person is already married, pregnant, married fraudulently, impotent, bisexual, or has a contagious disease, that can be immediately brought to the notice of the court to cancel the marriage. Why one year-because mostly they try to understand each other within that period, and if things do not go well still, then the parties start complaining, then they go with the same complaint.
“They (the men or groom) are financially bullied. In these cases, women emotionally abuse the partner and financially manipulate the partner, trying to find out about his salary. They just try to get down all the details, like who all are earning members in the family, their property details, they consider everything, and then they start. Information is given to the family members, and they all plot a plan. Whoever commits these marriage frauds faces severe penalties, which could include deportation, being sent to jail, etc. All such cases need to be assessed,” explains the senior advocate.
Are men always to blame?
Men’s mental health is always ignored, and there are various reasons for this. The first is the conditioning that begins at home, be it with caregivers, biological parents, adopted parents, or even grandparents. When it comes to raising boys, they are conditioned to be strong and be able to withstand a lot of hardships and emotional difficulties; they do not ask for help or break down easily. Due to this, boys resort to coping mechanisms from a very young age. Men do not have a resource person, unlike girls, to go and talk to.
Kavita Panyam, a counseling psychologist specialising in co-dependency recovery from Secunderabad, shares, “India definitely follows patriarchal society, especially major parts of India, except for Kerala. In a patriarchal society, it is the man who leads society, and when it is a man who heads or leads a family, at that point, he is responsible for whatever is happening. When it comes to violence and being abused, more women are being abused as compared to men. Men may not be able to record due to many reasons, including how many men are being abused. We do not have many stories of men coming out. However, after the pandemic, we have seen a change where men have come forward talking about how they are being abused, manipulated, and used by their better halves or wives. By and large, it is the man who is asked because society is conditioning men to abuse women. But women also abuse men.”
#MenToo
Initially, when #MeToo was launched, a lot of people spoke up about how they were abused, but at that time, Pooja Bedi came up with #MenToo. When the #MenToo movement was launched, it was able to save very many men. Many men had applauded Pooja Bedi for #MenToo. They were not only able to speak up about how they were being abused but also get divorced and sort out their problems without being slapped with false cases.
“Since we don’t hear such stories coming out of men, that is why it is presumed that in a patriarchal society where men are dominant and very violent, though we have taken evidence from the past and ongoing, I would now say that somewhere we are now reaching an equivalent point where both of them kind of even out,” highlights counseling psychologist.
There have also been cases where women have withheld a lot of things from men before marriage and have not told them. For example, they are taking psychiatrist medication, have had abortions, surgeries, or PCOD, whether they are fertile or infertile, or even by their gender. She further adds, “Earlier, it was men who used to do it, and now even women are doing it. They do it to get married or get into relationships. These days, a lot of women are also doing things like ‘My body, my wish’ kind of thing and not wanting to have a baby. Men get to know about it post-marriage, and this takes a toll on men because the moment they start saying I want this or I want that, they are labelled as insensitive and cruel. We cannot generalise that all men are in a certain way.”
Toll on men’s health
In such incidents, Kavita shares that it begins with overthinking, anger, depression, and anxiety. All this happens because of the injustice that happened to one and the fear of not having sufficient help or the right amount of help because you might be labelled and judged.
“Gender equality is very important. Beti bachao, beti dhan hai, meri ek beti sau ke barabar hai. There has been a lot of male bashing that has been happening on social media. It is like Mahila Morcha, Mahila Mukti Samelan; all of these are in every nook and cranny. But what do you have for a man? If a group of women are sitting at a kitty party and discussing something and a woman says, ‘My husband slapped me last night or raped me brutally’, then these women support her, and they go take it out on their husbands. There is no equality when it comes to the system providing equal justice to everybody,” she shares, adding, “I do think that men are emotional. Now it depends on the caregiver, who is a mother, because the first 5 years are crucial for a child’s emotional health to develop. If a boy falls down and screams for help, the mother says it is nothing; just get up, go and play, and don’t be weak. Men are not supposed to cry; men are warriors, and on the other hand, women are goddesses, princesses, papa ki pari, and all. Society has conditioned everybody that men are the providers and hunters, and men are basically the people one goes to for support. Which also means that men have little room to feel emotional or unpack their pain with family members right from childhood. Society can stigmatise elderly people, women, and other genders. But men also need to rest financially, socially, and mentally, and be humans too, so just relax.”
On the whole, it is time for parties to a marriage, be it the families or the bride/bridegroom themselves, to take all precautions before the wedding bells rings so that no one falls prey to scamsters coming in the guise of matchmakers, prospective bride or prospective bridegrooms. Thorough background check should be the mantra. It is as important as, if not more important than, marriage rites.
