The short answer is no, not by simply putting your belongings outside the door. The law gives a specific and enforceable protection here.
The right to residence
Section 17 of the Protection of Women from Domestic Violence Act, 2005 provides that 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 shall not be evicted or excluded from it save in accordance with the procedure established by law.
What counts as a shared household
This was long disputed. In Satish Chander Ahuja v. Sneha Ahuja (2020) the Supreme Court held that a shared household can include a house belonging to a relative of the husband, such as the father-in-law, where the woman has lived in a domestic relationship, and it overruled the narrower earlier view in S.R. Batra v. Taruna Batra. So a property in the in-laws' name is not automatically outside the Act.
This is the crucial distinction. The residence right protects occupation; it does not transfer any share in the property. The owner can still pursue a civil suit asserting title, and courts will decide the residence claim and the ownership claim on their own footings, often directing alternative accommodation of the same standard or rent instead of continued occupation.
What to do if you are being pushed out
- File an application before the Magistrate under the PWDVA seeking a residence order under Section 19, and an interim or ex parte order if the threat is immediate.
- Ask specifically for restraint on dispossession, on alienating or disposing of the household, and on renouncing rights in it.
- Call the police and record the incident. A written complaint creates the contemporaneous record that decides these cases.
- Photograph the household and your belongings, and preserve any messages threatening eviction.
If you have already been put out
The Magistrate can order that you be restored to possession of the shared household. Move quickly, because the longer the exclusion continues, the more likely the court is to lean toward ordering alternative accommodation instead.