India, is the epitome of the fundamental rights guaranteed to the citizen. The Constitution also prohibits discrimination on grounds of religion, race, castes, sex or place of birth. Article 21 of the Constitution confers a fundamental right to all the citizen of the country to live with dignity, free from exploitation. In order to implement these commands of the Constitution, various legislations have been enacted. To uphold the rules of law and with an avowed intention to provide an atmosphere where the citizens can lead a dignified life and to protect them from any kind of discrimination, more particularly gender based discrimination, the Indian Penal Code is being amended time to time. Similarly, introduction of Section 498 A in the Indian Penal Code vide Amendment Act No.46 of 1983 can be said to be the beginning of a new era to protect weak and docile married women, who were subjected to cruelty and harassment by their husbands and relatives. It was followed by insertion of Section 304 B in the Penal Code providing severe punishment for the murder of a woman for non-fulfilling the demand of dowry. Parallely, Section 113 A and 113B were also inserted in the Evidence Act, 1872 to draw presumptions in the matter of abatement to suicide by a married woman and dowry death. In my opinion, these provisions must have been introduced so that offenders of crime against woman may not escape the rigour of law due to loose knots in the prosecution. Latest in the series is the enactment of the Protection of Women from Domestic Violence Act, 2005 to protect and curb widely prevalent offences of domestic violence. Despite amendments to the existing laws and enactments of various statutes, the graph of crime against women is still rising, without any abatement. Statistics show that the women are still exploited, molested, raped and discriminated and acquittal rates are abysmally high for such offences. Hence, it can be said that women are still at the receiving end not because of inadequate laws, but prima facie, due to lack of its implementation in proper spirit.
