A mob vandalized a police station in west Delhi this week after a woman accused five policemen of raping her in a police station.

This is not the first time enforcers of the law have been accused of rape.

In 2005, a 16-year-old girl was raped by a drunk constable in south Mumbai in the infamous Marine Drive rape case.

A year later, another police constable was accused of raping a slum dweller in Karnal.

Data from the National Crimes Record Bureau shows courts tried 132 policemen for custodial rape in 2002 but only four were convicted.

Does this mean women who seek the help of the law are better off not reporting crimes committed against them?

Some amendments were made to the Code of Criminal Procedure Act in 2005 to prevent incidents of custodial rape.

For example, the Act prohibits the arrest of women after sunset and before sunrise except in exceptional circumstances.

But how many women know about their rights? And are steps like this enough?

ALSO READ: Surviving as a woman in urban India

“The state government is trying to establish the rule of law…however so mighty someone may be, without any discrimination, whatever their clout is, they will still be put on trial.” 

This is what Neelmani, a senior police officer in Bihar, told me in a recent interview.

He said the “Jungle Raj”, which gave the state a reputation for corruption, kidnappings and crime, is coming to an end.

The state’s bad name made me expect the worst. But violent crime such as civilian killings has dropped sharply in the past four years.

When you ask people in the capital, Patna, what they are happiest about now, they often say they can venture out after dark without fear.

Chief Minister Nitish Kumar wants to present his leadership in stark contrast to that of his predecessors, Lalu Prasad Yadav and his wife Rabri Devi, who ruled the state for 15 years until 2005.

Prasad handed over the reins to his wife when he was accused in the “Fodder Scam”, a large-scale corruption case.

Her residence is just opposite Chief Minister Kumar’s, and despite the bluster around Kumar, Prasad and his wife may well think they can cross the road again in the future.

Taking a short trip to a village just outside Patna, it is clear Bihar faces an uphill battle.

I wanted to check out how Congress’ flagship National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (NREGA) had worked.

The villagers complained they were getting ripped off by contractors and threatened with jail.

At a small government office in the area, I could see why. A contractor we talked to was very friendly at first. He gave us plates of delicious grapes and tea.

But when we asked him about NREGA, he clammed up.

His senior came in mid-way through the conversation, took him to one side and, so says a friend of mine who overheard them, muttered something about a short jail stint if he spilled the beans.

We asked where we could meet NREGA labourers. Twice a local came in, heard what we were talking about and offered to help, and twice they were quickly ushered out past a small sign by the door warning against corruption.

We ventured out on our own to find the workers. When we did, they listed ways in which their money disappeared in NREGA. 

One trick was simply not to pay them. Another was to get them to work for weeks and then not record it. Yet another was to take their thumbprints and then go collect the money.

The job scheme has faced problems in several states and done well in others. I was left in little doubt in which category Bihar falls.

Nitish Kumar is campaigning on a platform of caste-blind development and communal harmony — a message that may or may not resonate in a state where caste loyalties are still strong.

But no one can write off Lalu Prasad, who many credit for giving a voice to the poor, to lower castes, and to Muslims when he was chief minister.

His party argues that Kumar’s much trumpeted development platform has excluded many of the state’s poorest.

Prasad is now the federal railway minister. He won praise for rescuing the service from near bankruptcy and turning it into a cash cow, and has given lectures to American Ivy League students on the success story.

But some Biharis may wonder why he did not work the same miracles for them.

“As the film revels in the violence, degradation and horror, it invites you, the Westerner, to enjoy it, too…Slumdog Millionaire is poverty porn,” wrote London Times’ columnist Alice Miles.

The phrase “poverty porn” spread across the Indian media as commentators nodded in agreement or shook their heads even before the film premiered in its native Mumbai and India could (legally) watch it.

A group of the city’s slum dwellers, including children, protested against the word “dog”. A social activist filed a defamation case in Patna. And this week, hundreds of slum dwellers in Bihar’s capital ransacked a movie theatre demanding the title be changed.

So, is it really “poverty porn” for the Westerner’s delectation? Are beatings, torture, and the maiming of street beggars a sick form of adult exotica?

Perhaps the question can be rephrased: does a morbid fascination with the suffering of others find a place in art and is “Slumdog” are a striking example of this?

Be it a film on the Nazi holocaust, or based on crime, or a painful examination of the horrors of drug abuse (Trainspotting?), viewers can gawk at the world’s dirty underbelly whether or not they would describe themselves as pain perverts.

But the film has caused real offense in some parts.

“‘Slumdog’ is just every scrap of dirt picked up from every corner and piled up together to try and hit back at the growing might of India. And the awards almost seem like a sadistic effort to show the world — look we knew that this was India, and these are the slumdogs we are outsourcing our jobs to,” wrote management consultant and film producer Arindam Chaudhuri on his blog.

Chaudhuri and others say the film crosses the line into stereotype in a way that “stinks of racial arrogance” and is designed to undermine India’s inevitable rise on the world stage.

According to Chaudhuri, the film serves up “India as the accidental millionaire, which in fact happens to be a slumdog”.

But take the critically acclaimed movie “La Haine” (Hate), about life in the grim suburbs of Paris. Riots, needless bloodshed, police’ brutal treatment of immigrants and monotonous poverty are its subject matter and there is no happy ending.

Should France have rushed to the city’s defence and said the (French) director wallowed in the city’s troubles when Paris has so much more to offer? Could he not have made a film set in the Louvre, the Eiffel Tower and the world-famous catwalks?

Should “City of God” have apologised for being set in the troubled slums of Rio and because it didn’t address Brazil’s own emergence on the world stage?

The director of “Slumdog”, Danny Boyle, is up for an Academy Award. But some panned the film on its own perceived demerits and said it does not deserve 10 Oscar nominations — three for music director A.R. Rahman will do. The three people I went to see it with were underwhelmed.

Some saw the film as trite and inconsistent. For example, the hero’s sudden knowledge of English after his stint as a guide at the Taj Mahal came under scrutiny, especially since it allowed Boyle to shoot large chunks of the film in his native tongue.

Whether or not a moviegoer wants to spend his money on a film set in slums seems a matter of taste, but with more expected protests in India, the controversy has not died down.

I never thought I’d see the day when a guy would shy away from feminine attention. An innocuous remark I left complimenting a friend’s photo on a social networking website backfired.

I sensed panic in his voice when he called me to clarify matters.”I am going through a messy divorce and my wife’s lawyer is tracking my Facebook profile. Any remotely intimate conversation with a member of the opposite sex could be interpreted as infidelity and I would be slapped with anti-dowry laws and made to pay heavily,” he said.

An out-of-court settlement in a failed marriage has so far cost my friend a posh south Delhi apartment and his car, assets that had taken him five years of hard work to acquire.

But he is more concerned the law will not protect his rights if his wife decides to file charges of harassment.

“Something she is brainwashed to do every day by her parents to make the most of the divorce,” he said.

As gender laws in India get tougher to protect women harassed for dowry, I am forced to wonder if we are missing a point here.

Websites, blogs and support groups have mushroomed in cyberspace offering free advice on misuse of the Dowry Prohibition Act  and Article 498A of the Indian Penal Code, one that men’s groups say are tools for ”legal extortion by radical feminists without a thought for the implications.”

Over 19,000 false cases were registered under Section 498A IPC and 615 under Dowry Prohibition Act, Minister of State for Women and Child Development Renuka Chowdhury told the lower house of parliament in November 2007, citing statistics furnished by the National Crime Records Bureau for 2004-06.

Offences under IPC 498A are “non-bailable, cognizable and non-compoundable” with a prison term of up to three years.

Advocacy groups like www.498a.org, savefamily.org and the Society for Prevention of Cruelty to Husbands aka Crime Against Man Cell help men at the receiving end of anti-dowry laws.

Delhi advocate R.P.Chugh, who heads the Man Cell, says domestic violence is a two-way road and need not always refer to wife-bashing as per popular perception. If you are a married man, you know the deadly effects of silent treatment, constant nagging or sulking for days.

Women’s groups argue that actual cases of male victimization are far less compared to the abuse and domestic violence women endure everyday across the country.

I could not agree more with a Delhi High Court judge who observed that laws were made to protect hundreds of women tortured and killed for dowry every year but have become a tool for urban middle or upper-middle class women looking to make a quick buck through divorce.

Anti-dowry laws are meant to give voice to silent victims of social abuse — a Herculean task in a country where family pride, fear of retribution and illiteracy pose stumbling blocks.

The National Commission for Women is campaigning for stricter punishment for offenders and demanding that the scope of the Act be increased.

Delhi alone accounts for 18.7 per cent of dowry death cases and 17.1 pct of cruelty by husbands and relatives, according to a 2006 report by the National Crime Records Bureau.

A reality check in largely illiterate rural India, where women fight poverty and domestic violence every day, throws up questions whether anti-dowry laws can be effectively implemented.  They are ones, I’m afraid, who will never hear of outrageous out-of-court divorce settlements.  In most case, they will be thankful to escape with their lives.

Has the time come then to introspect on the far-reaching impact anti-dowry laws have on the lives of men and women and the burden on judiciary with every false claim of harassment?

Often police fail to conduct proper investigations before hauling off an elderly family member to jail based on a complaint by a woman. At the same time, hundreds of complaints of abuse at the hands of in-laws go unnoticed in rural India.

I feel strong laws are necessary to protect women against abuse. Laws that will deter repeat offenders. But I want them where they are truly needed, implemented through an unbiased and transparent police system with wider reach and humane approach.