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.IN
1) Walk into the police station or the CAW cell or Pariwar Paramarsh Kendra five minutes before or after the complainant. Take similar precautions while walking out. If you have to go to another town then take a friend with you. Always keep your mobile with you when you go to the CAW cell, and keep it switched on. Carry with you any medicines which you need to take everyday, and do not carry any valuable items. Even the mobile phone which you carry should be cheap. Talk boldly and do not shout or fight.
Do not allow your wife to assault you. Try to go with your mother or your sister when you are going to a place where you might meet your 498a wife. But even if your mother or sister is not with you, it does not give your wife the right to assault you. Gather a crowd if she makes any stupid attempt.
2) In court, do not let any hidden enemy of yours become a witness from your side. Try to attend all dates. Give as much information as is necessary to all people who you meet during your legal battle, no more. Protect your parents from having to run around all over the place, including to lawyers and courts. Do all of this yourself.
3) Make baseless serious allegations against your wife if she has made baseless serious allegations against you. If she has dragged 2 of your relatives into the fight, sling legal mud at 8 of her relatives. They will put pressure on her and her parents to back down. Create such a storm of bad feelings that she starts to get discouraged.
4) If you feel that you have a weak case, then give your lawyer the brief that he has to drag out the case as long as possible. This will demoralise the other party. Also, in such a situation, refuse to give divorce on the grounds demanded by her to the other party. Always give divorce on your own conditions or get divorce on grounds claimed by you. Let her fight for your money and the freedom to marry another man. Pay her back in the same coin as she has done to you. Remember that the lawyers who rule our country have made this jangled mess of laws so that their near and dear ones can profit from all the litigation. It does not bear saying here what profession their near and dear ones are likely to be practicing. Give those great men and women what they wanted from you. Litigate, litigate, and litigate.
5) Use RTI and letter writing to fight your case, but do not go gaga over such tools.
6)Don't try to bribe your way out of trouble. Do everything legally.
7) Remember to file for divorce on grounds of cruelty or adultery or venereal disease only. Or for an annulment on grounds of fraud. After a long litigation she will come to the table for mutual consent divorce herself. One thing worth telling here is that the decision/findings of a civil court holds precedence over the decision of a criminal court of the same level. Therefore, if you are able to prove that it was your wife who committed cruelty upon you, or did other actions which amounted to cruelty, then she stands no chance of winning against you in the 498a case.
8)Similarly if you go in for a mutual consent divorce, the two of you cannot get it unless you both declare that you have no remaining dispute with each other. This is bulletproof protection against future civil and criminal litigation aimed at you or your family.
9) Never try to contact the investigating officer or the public prosecutor, directly or indirectly.
10)Never make a demand for your wife to withdraw her case, except while conciliation or mediation proceedings are in an ongoing phase.
11) File a suit for a permanent injunction against your wife and her parents, prohibiting them from entering your parents' house. Name her
relatives also in the suit, just to be on the safe side, and to insult them.
12) Do not let your parents disinherit you or to disown you through a newspaper notice. Many lawyers recommend this as a way to prevent your wife from coming to your house. This is usually done in a format where the parent disowns his son and daughter-in-law as one unit. This is a foolish step, and renders any previous will null and void, and has the potential to leave you homeless should something happen to your parents. On the contrary, use this period of interaction with lawyers to let your parents make properly drafted wills bequeathing their property to you. Remember that presenting contradictory pictures in front of the law can get you entangled in a mess. You are after all not a movie star or a politician.
13) Do not change your place of residence unless your lawyer convinces you logically that this is what you need to do in order to gain some legal advantage. Your home is your castle, and nobody should be able to turn you out of it by scaring you.
14) File counter cases. This will have a triple impact.
Firstly, Mrs. 498a will realise that you will not let your enemy get your money without a fight.
Secondly, she herself will be forced to hire a lawyer to fight your counter cases. The lawyer will not come for free, and will charge a fee. Also (third effect) there will be constant tension in her mind and her parents' minds due to cases against themselves. She will very quickly see that the initial expectation of getting money for free was wrong and that she is now forced to spend money from her own pocket with no guaranteed reimbursement, AND face tension and legal harassment. She will now start to see the light of reason and will start thinking about making peace with you and taking the relatively easy exit of divorce by mutual consent.
15)Remember, softly softly catchee monkee.
You may also wish to read How to Deal with Lawyers in your 498a/DV/Divorce Battle, RCR: Something to Avoid, and/or NRIs and PIOs: 498a FAQs