The Protection of Women from Domestic Violence Act, 2005

What it does

The Act is Act No. 43 of 2005 and it came into force on 26 October 2006. It provides a civil remedy for domestic violence, which the Penal Code alone could not give, since a criminal case punishes the offender but does not provide a roof, maintenance or an order against further harm. Domestic violence under the Act includes physical, sexual, verbal and emotional abuse and economic abuse.

A woman, or a Protection Officer or other person on her behalf, applies to a Magistrate under section 12. The Magistrate may grant a protection order, a residence order, monetary relief, a custody order for children and compensation. The Act requires the first hearing to be fixed within three days of the application and the Magistrate to try to dispose of it within sixty days. Breach of a protection order is itself an offence.

Who it binds

The Act protects a woman in a domestic relationship, which covers a marriage, a relationship in the nature of marriage, and kinship through blood or adoption, where she lives or has lived together in a shared household. A respondent was originally an adult male. In Hiral P Harsora v Kusum Narottamdas Harsora (2016), the Supreme Court struck down the words restricting a respondent to an adult male, so a woman relative of the husband or partner can be a respondent. The Act also binds Protection Officers, whom the State appoints, and service providers.

What has changed, and when

The statute has changed little since 2006. The changes have come from judgments. The Supreme Court read the right to reside in a shared household widely in Satish Chander Ahuja v Sneha Ahuja (2020), and in Rajnesh v Neha (2020) it laid down guidelines on maintenance, including that maintenance awarded in one proceeding is to be adjusted against what is awarded in another so that the respondent is not made to pay twice. The criminal law around it changed on 1 July 2024, when the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita, 2023 replaced the Indian Penal Code, 1860.

What turns on it in practice

The site names the Act in its notes on criminal and sensitive litigation and on matrimonial and child custody. For the matrimonial and family practice, the central point is that the remedy runs alongside others and not in place of them. The same facts may support a petition for divorce or judicial separation under the personal law, a claim for maintenance under section 144 of the Bharatiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita, 2023, a complaint of cruelty under sections 85 and 86 of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita, 2023, and an application under this Act.

Three questions recur. What the claim is for, since a residence order protects occupation of the shared household and does not decide title to it. How the monetary relief under this Act relates to maintenance awarded elsewhere, which is the set-off point in Rajnesh v Neha. And whether the application names the right respondents with specific allegations, since an application against many relatives on general allegations is vulnerable.

For a respondent, the first response is usually on the facts of the relationship and the household, because the Act applies only to a domestic relationship and a shared household. For the applicant, the order in which the remedies are taken, and the consistency of the account given in each, decides how far each helps the others. The criminal note on the site records the Supreme Court's caution against the indiscriminate use of cruelty provisions against distant relatives, and the same caution informs how an application under this Act is drafted.