EVERY Saturday evening, a group of male victims meets outside a courthouse here to swap stories about vicious wives tormenting them under India's pro-women laws.

The men, members of the Save Indian Family Foundation, believe they have been at the receiving end of vengeful women for long enough and are campaigning for "men's rights".

At the last weekly support meeting, Avinash Datta, 32, related how his wife threatened to have him and his elderly mother thrown into jail by falsely accusing him of demanding more dowry after their marriage two years ago.

"She used to blackmail me. If I didn't do what she wanted, she threatened to go to the police and charge me under the anti-dowry laws," said Mr Datta, a mild-looking engineer.

"I was so scared the police would arrest me that I went into hiding with friends. My mother was so frightened I thought she'd have a heart attack."

India's laws on dowry and domestic violence are meant to protect women against mistreatment and violent husbands — but increasingly unscrupulous wives are abusing them to intimidate or blackmail husbands.

Judges, after throwing out false cases, have commented on this new "legal terrorism", expressing concern that laws intended to function as a "shield" for women are being turned into "weapons" in marital conflicts.

The Foundation's helpline is inundated with calls from distraught men whose wives have laid false complaints against them to get them thrown in jail. Under the draconian anti-dowry laws, bail is given only at a judge's discretion and a man is presumed guilty until proven innocent.

"A man can rot for years while the woman lives happily in the home that the man's parents built, " said Mahesh Tiwari, a (happily married) New Delhi lawyer who works for the Foundation. "And he can go bankrupt fighting the case in the courts."

Last month, the Foundation, along with other men's rights groups such as the Harassed Husbands' Association, urged the Prime Minister to create a "Men's Ministry" to protect their rights.

The Foundation is also fighting the abuse of the 2005 Domestic Violence Act, which it says is too loose and open in its definition of violence. The Act allows women to define virtually any domestic squabble as an act of cruelty by the husband, including name-calling. If a woman reports her husband under the Act, she can win the right to stay in the marital home while the man and his parents can be thrown out.

Most male victims are affluent professionals, according to Swarup Sarkar, a Foundation member. "Rickshaw wallahs or taxi drivers don't face these cases. Their wives know they won't get any money out of them."

Women might be inclined to take the Foundation's claims with a pinch of salt given the generally subservient status of women in Indian society.

But Sadhana Ramachandran, a female lawyer in the capital who used to take up women's cases, has changed her mind after becoming disillusioned with women abusing the laws.

"I have known innocent, decent men put in jail by women because they want custody of the children or the house. I've seen men turned into mental wrecks fighting these cases because cases in India can take 20 years, ruining your life," she said.