Can we really blame the beta Indian men? Before an article was posted here that pre marital sex in India is considered to be a binding marriage by the courts. And now this. I took this from Wall Street Journal, it's right at the front page today. I've copy/pasted the article for those interested:
Indian Rape Law Offers Desperate Last Resort
NEW DELHI—It wasn’t going to be a fancy wedding, just a civil ceremony at the courthouse. Still, Rajni Gautam was elated finally to be marrying the man she loved—and the father of her unborn child.
The groom failed to show, however. Ms. Gautam says she phoned him, and her heart sank. “I heard the sound of a train.”
Her husband-to-be had taken off.
So later that week, Ms. Gautam says, she did the only thing a woman in her position could do: She filed a rape complaint against him.
“I didn’t have any other option,” says Ms. Gautam, who is 26, and who was two months pregnant when this happened late last year. She hoped to force him to come back and go through with the marriage.
Across India, police and women’s advocates say they are dealing with a flood of rape complaints like Ms. Gautam’s. No one keeps a tally, but the cases are common enough that police in the capital city of New Delhi have a special term for them: “false promise” complaints, referring to men who promise marriage in hopes of persuading a woman to agree to sex.
Young women in India are gaining far greater social freedoms—to work, to study, to date—than in the past. However, for large parts of the population, tradition still holds that premarital sex is an absolute no-no with harsh consequences. Pregnant, unmarried women in particular may suffer ostracism from families, a sole avenue for support, as well as harassment.
Paradoxically, filing a rape complaint to try to secure a marriage is one of the few tools these women have to achieve social acceptance. Interviews nationwide with more than two dozen law-enforcement officials, lawyers and women’s advocates, as well as women who themselves used India’s rape law this way, suggest the practice is relatively common. And it is legal, as courts have ruled.
Indian Rape Law Offers Desperate Last Resort
NEW DELHI—It wasn’t going to be a fancy wedding, just a civil ceremony at the courthouse. Still, Rajni Gautam was elated finally to be marrying the man she loved—and the father of her unborn child.
The groom failed to show, however. Ms. Gautam says she phoned him, and her heart sank. “I heard the sound of a train.”
Her husband-to-be had taken off.
So later that week, Ms. Gautam says, she did the only thing a woman in her position could do: She filed a rape complaint against him.
“I didn’t have any other option,” says Ms. Gautam, who is 26, and who was two months pregnant when this happened late last year. She hoped to force him to come back and go through with the marriage.
Across India, police and women’s advocates say they are dealing with a flood of rape complaints like Ms. Gautam’s. No one keeps a tally, but the cases are common enough that police in the capital city of New Delhi have a special term for them: “false promise” complaints, referring to men who promise marriage in hopes of persuading a woman to agree to sex.
Young women in India are gaining far greater social freedoms—to work, to study, to date—than in the past. However, for large parts of the population, tradition still holds that premarital sex is an absolute no-no with harsh consequences. Pregnant, unmarried women in particular may suffer ostracism from families, a sole avenue for support, as well as harassment.
Paradoxically, filing a rape complaint to try to secure a marriage is one of the few tools these women have to achieve social acceptance. Interviews nationwide with more than two dozen law-enforcement officials, lawyers and women’s advocates, as well as women who themselves used India’s rape law this way, suggest the practice is relatively common. And it is legal, as courts have ruled.