The Protection of Women from Domestic Violence Act, 2005 is essentially a civil remedy with criminal consequences for breach. It protects any woman in a domestic relationship in a shared household, which includes a wife, a mother, a sister, a daughter, and a woman in a relationship in the nature of marriage. It covers physical, sexual, verbal and emotional, and economic abuse.
Before you file
Document everything you safely can. Photographs of injuries, medical records and doctor's notes, threatening messages and call records, bank statements showing the cutting off of money, names of anyone who witnessed incidents. Cases are won and lost on this, and it is much harder to assemble after you have left the house.
Take copies out of the house rather than leaving them there: identity and address documents, the marriage certificate or wedding photographs, educational and employment certificates, bank and locker records, property papers, the children's birth certificates and school records, prescriptions and medical files. Photograph what you cannot take, and back it up to an account only you control, because a phone can be taken from you and a shared cloud account can be locked.
The routes in
- The Protection Officer for your district, who records a Domestic Incident Report and places it before the Magistrate. In Karnataka these are officers of the Department of Women and Child Development, with Deputy Directors notified at district level and Child Development Project Officers at taluk level, alongside a set of dedicated Protection Officers.
- A registered service provider or a recognised NGO, which can do the same.
- Directly before the Magistrate by filing an application. This is the fastest route and the one most lawyers use.
Which court, and how quickly it should move
The application is made under Section 12 to the Court of the Judicial Magistrate of the first class or the Metropolitan Magistrate. Section 27 lets you file where you reside, permanently or temporarily, or where you work, as well as where the respondent is or where the cause of action arose. A woman who has left the matrimonial home and come back to her parents in Bengaluru can therefore file here rather than travelling back to the town she left.
The Act sets its own pace. Section 12(4) says the first date of hearing should not ordinarily be more than three days after the court receives the application, and Section 12(5) asks the Magistrate to endeavour to dispose of it within sixty days of the first hearing. Section 23 matters most in the first week: the Magistrate can pass any interim order, and can pass an ex parte order on your affidavit alone where the application prima facie discloses that domestic violence has been committed or is likely. If you are in immediate danger, that is what to ask for on day one. There is also no limitation bar on filing. In Kamatchi v. Lakshmi Narayanan (2022) the Supreme Court held that a Section 12 application is not a complaint of an offence, so the criminal limitation period does not apply, and delay goes to the merits rather than to maintainability.
| Relief | Section | What it does |
|---|---|---|
| Protection order | 18 | Restrains further acts of violence, contact or communication |
| Residence order | 19 | Secures the right to remain in the shared household, or alternate accommodation |
| Monetary relief | 20 | Maintenance, loss of earnings, medical expenses, damage to property |
| Custody order | 21 | Temporary custody of children |
| Compensation | 22 | For mental torture and emotional distress |
| Interim and ex parte | 23 | Any of the above, pending final disposal |
What you can ask for, in one application
- Protection order, restraining further abuse and contact
- Residence order, so you cannot be evicted from the shared household
- Monetary relief for maintenance, loss of earnings, medical expenses and property loss
- Custody order for interim custody of children
- Compensation for the distress caused
Each is a separate section, and forgetting one is a common and expensive drafting mistake: protection orders are Section 18, residence orders Section 19, monetary relief Section 20, custody Section 21 and compensation Section 22. Two repay a closer look.
The residence order is wider than most people expect. Section 19 lets the Magistrate restrain the respondent from dispossessing or disturbing your possession of the shared household whether or not he has any legal interest in it, direct him to remove himself from it, restrain him from alienating or encumbering it, or direct him to provide the same level of alternate accommodation or pay the rent for it. No order to remove herself can be passed against a woman. What decides many of these cases is what counts as a "shared household", and in Satish Chander Ahuja v. Sneha Ahuja (2020) the Supreme Court took a broader view than the earlier decision in S.R. Batra v. Taruna Batra, holding that a house belonging to the husband's parents can be a shared household on the facts. The guide on a wife's right to residence in the matrimonial home sets out how that is pleaded and proved.
The monetary relief order can be routed through the employer. Section 20 requires the relief to be adequate, fair and reasonable and consistent with the standard of living you are accustomed to, and allows either a lump sum or monthly payments. Section 20(6) then lets the Magistrate, on default, direct the respondent's employer or a debtor to pay a portion of his salary or of the debt directly to you or into court. That sub-section does more work than most enforcement applications.
A protection order that is disobeyed is not a paper order. Breach of a protection order or an interim protection order is an offence under Section 31 of the Act, punishable with imprisonment which may extend to one year, or fine which may extend to twenty thousand rupees, or both, and it is to be tried as far as practicable by the same Magistrate who passed the order. That last part matters: the judge hearing the breach already knows the file.
Who the respondent can be
The Act was once read as allowing only an adult male to be made a respondent. In Hiral P. Harsora v. Kusum Narottamdas Harsora (2016) the Supreme Court struck down the words "adult male" in the definition of respondent, so a mother in law, sister in law or other female relative can now be arrayed where the allegations are against them. Array only those against whom you have facts. A blanket array of every relative is the commonest reason such an application loses credibility early.
If the order is being ignored
Two things run in parallel: a prosecution under Section 31 before the Magistrate who passed the order, and an application for practical enforcement of the relief itself, including the salary route under Section 20(6). The guide to obtaining a protection order covers what should be written into the order in the first place so that it can be enforced later. An appeal against any order of the Magistrate lies to the Court of Session under Section 29, within thirty days of service.
It runs alongside other cases
A PWDVA application can run in parallel with a criminal complaint (cruelty by a husband or his relatives is now Section 85 of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita), a maintenance claim under Section 144 BNSS, and a divorce petition.