Domestic Violence Act India: The Remedies a Court Can Order

Most people assume a domestic violence complaint means an arrest, a charge sheet and a criminal trial. Usually it does not. The domestic violence Act India relies on is the Protection of Women from Domestic Violence Act 2005, and it is a civil statute. No one is convicted under it. What it does is give a Judicial Magistrate the power to pass five distinct kinds of order, and then makes the breach of one of those orders a separate criminal offence.

That design is the point of the law. A woman who wants her husband kept out of the house, her salary account released, her children left with her and her rent paid does not need a conviction. She needs orders, and she needs them fast. Section 12 of the Act is how she asks. Section 23 is what lets a magistrate act on the first date of hearing rather than at the end of a trial.

Who can file, and against whom

Section 2(a) calls the applicant the “aggrieved person”: any woman who is, or has been, in a domestic relationship with the respondent and who alleges domestic violence. That is wider than wives. A sister facing a violent brother, a mother pushed out by a son, a widow deprived of her share of household property and a woman in a live in relationship can all be aggrieved persons.

Section 2(f) defines the domestic relationship. It covers people who live or have lived together in a shared household and are related by marriage, by blood, by adoption, as members of a joint family, or through a relationship in the nature of marriage. That last phrase is where the arguments happen. Courts look at the length of the relationship, whether the couple held themselves out to the world as spouses, whether they pooled money and ran one household. A relationship that fails those tests, for example where the woman knew from the start that the man was already married, may fall outside the Act altogether.

Section 2(q) originally described the respondent as an “adult male person”. In 2016 the Supreme Court struck those words down as arbitrary. The practical effect is that a mother in law, a sister in law or any female relative can be made a respondent. One limit survives: the proviso to Section 19(1) says no order can be passed directing a woman to remove herself from the shared household.

Section 3 sets out four heads of domestic violence, and the fourth is the one people forget. Economic abuse is expressly covered: withholding maintenance, taking away stridhan, selling household goods, stopping her from using the shared household, or cutting off access to money she is entitled to.

The five orders a magistrate can pass

Sections 18 to 22 are the working part of the domestic violence Act India passed in 2005. Each does something distinct, and an application should ask for the ones the facts actually support rather than all five by habit.

Section	Order	What it does in practice
18	Protection order	Stops further violence, contact, and visits to her workplace or the child’s school. Can also stop the respondent from operating a joint locker or disposing of stridhan.
19	Residence order	Restrains dispossession, can direct the respondent to leave the shared household, and can require him to provide comparable alternate accommodation or pay the rent for it.
20	Monetary relief	Loss of earnings, medical expenses, loss caused by removal or destruction of property, and maintenance. Payable as a lump sum or monthly.
21	Custody order	Temporary custody of the children to the aggrieved person, with or without visitation to the respondent. Visitation can be refused if a visit would harm the child.
22	Compensation	Damages for injuries, including mental torture and emotional distress.

Section 23 runs across all five. It lets the magistrate pass interim orders, and where an affidavit discloses that the respondent is committing or is likely to commit domestic violence, an ex parte order before he is even heard. Section 20(6) adds teeth: if maintenance is not paid, the magistrate can direct the respondent’s employer or a debtor of his to pay it directly out of salary or wages.

The shared household, and what Section 17 really gives

Section 17 says every woman in a domestic relationship has the right to reside in the shared household, whether or not she has any right, title or beneficial interest in it. She cannot be evicted except by procedure established by law.

In 2020 the Supreme Court settled a long running dispute and held that a house owned by the parents in law can be a shared household, if the woman lived there in a domestic relationship. The earlier view, that only property owned or tenanted by the husband counted, no longer holds.

Read the section for what it is. It creates a right of residence, not a right of ownership. It does not convert her into a co owner, and a residence order can be answered by providing an equivalent alternative under Section 19(1)(f).

How the case actually runs

The application under Section 12 goes to a Judicial Magistrate First Class. Section 27 gives three choices of place: where the aggrieved person permanently or temporarily resides, works or carries on business; where the respondent resides or works; or where the cause of action arose. A woman who has left Jabalpur for her parents’ home in another district can file there. That single provision saves a great deal of travel.

A Domestic Incident Report, Form I under the 2006 Rules, is normally prepared by the Protection Officer or a registered service provider. The magistrate must consider it before passing an order, but the absence of a report does not by itself defeat an application filed directly.

The statutory clock is short:

• Section 12(4): the first date of hearing should ordinarily be fixed within three days of the court receiving the application.
• Section 13(1): notice is to be served by the Protection Officer within two days, or such further time as the magistrate allows.
• Section 12(5): the magistrate is to endeavour to dispose of the application within sixty days of the first hearing.

Be honest about the gap between that and reality. Contested matters commonly run well past sixty days, because service, counselling under Section 14 and evidence all take time. This is precisely why interim relief under Section 23 matters more than the final order for most applicants.

The domestic violence Act India uses borrows its machinery from the criminal courts while remaining civil in substance. Section 28 applies criminal procedure to these proceedings, but sub section (2) lets the court lay down its own procedure for an application under Section 12 or Section 23(2). Section 16 allows the proceedings to be held in camera if either party asks.

On limitation: there is no limitation period for filing a Section 12 application. The Supreme Court has held that the one year bar which criminal procedure applies to minor offences does not govern an application under this Act, because it is not a complaint of an offence. Delay is still relevant, since a magistrate weighs it when deciding what relief the facts now justify, and the domestic relationship must have existed at some point.

Breach is where the criminal law enters

Section 31 makes breach of a protection order, or of an interim protection order, an offence punishable with imprisonment up to one year, a fine up to Rs 20,000, or both. It is cognizable and non-bailable, and as far as practicable it is tried by the same magistrate who passed the order. Where the facts support it, the court can also frame a charge of cruelty by a husband or his relatives under Section 85 of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita 2023, read with Section 86, which replaced Section 498A of the Indian Penal Code.

That is the honest answer to the question people ask most often. The domestic violence Act India relies on does not send anyone to jail for the violence itself. It sends them to jail for ignoring the court’s order about it.

How it fits with the other cases

Section 26 is underused. It allows every relief available under Sections 18 to 22 to be claimed in any other pending proceeding before a civil court, family court or criminal court, including a divorce or a judicial separation petition. A woman already litigating a divorce does not always need a separate file.

Maintenance under Section 20 runs alongside maintenance under Section 144 of the Bharatiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita 2023, the provision that replaced Section 125 of the CrPC, and alongside a Hindu wife’s claim under the Hindu Adoptions and Maintenance Act 1956. Courts adjust for overlap. Nobody collects the same amount twice. Where children are involved, the custody question is usually decided in more detail in a separate proceeding, and our note on how courts decide child custody in India explains the test they apply.

An appeal against any order under the Act lies to the Court of Session under Section 29, within thirty days from the date the order is served on the aggrieved person or the respondent, whichever is later. Section 25(2) separately allows the magistrate to alter, modify or revoke an order if circumstances change.

What weakens an otherwise good application

• A vague narration. The magistrate needs dates, places, what was said or done, who was present, and the address of the shared household. A page of adjectives is worth less than four dated incidents.
• No financial material. Monetary relief turns on the respondent’s income and earning capacity. Ask early for salary slips, income tax returns, bank statements, GST filings and property records, and seek directions if they are withheld.
• Skipping interim relief. An application that asks only for final orders leaves the applicant unprotected for the months the case takes.
• Overstating. An application that alleges everything and proves little damages the parts that are true.
• Ignoring the criminal side. Where stridhan has been retained, criminal breach of trust may be available in addition, and that is a separate decision to take deliberately, not by default.

We appear in matters under this Act before the magistrate courts in Jabalpur, and in related appeals and petitions before the Madhya Pradesh High Court. Where an FIR under the cruelty provisions has also been registered against the wider family, the strategy on both files has to be planned together rather than in isolation, and our explanation of when a High Court will quash an FIR sets out what that involves. The broader scope of this work is described on our criminal and matrimonial practice page.

This article is general information about the law and is not legal advice on any particular matter. Facts change outcomes, and the right sequence of steps depends on your own situation. If you want to discuss yours, reach us through the contact page.