A Legal and Human Perspective
When we hear the words domestic violence, most of us picture the same image — a bruise, a hospital, a woman with visible injuries. We picture something dramatic, something unmistakable. But in working with law and studying human rights in India, one thing becomes clear: this image, while real, is dangerously incomplete.
The bruise is only the surface. Beneath it lies a world of quiet, invisible, sustained violence that millions of Indian women wake up to every single morning — and which most of them will never report, never name, and never escape.
This article is an attempt to look at domestic violence honestly — through data, through law, through human psychology, and through the stories that rarely make it to court.
Before we discuss solutions, we must first accept the truth of the problem. And the truth, as research tells us, is staggering.
The National Family Health Survey (NFHS-5, 2019–2021) found that nearly 30% of ever-married women in India have experienced physical, sexual, or emotional violence at the hands of their spouse. That is roughly one in every three married women in this country.
What is even more troubling is what happens — or rather, what does not happen — after the abuse occurs. According to the same survey, only 14% of women who experience spousal violence ever seek any form of help. And of that 14%, very few approach the police or a court of law. The overwhelming majority suffer in silence — adjusting, enduring, and waiting for something to change.
Cases registered under Section 498A IPC (cruelty by husband or relatives) in 2021 alone — according to the National Crime Records Bureau. And yet this number represents only a fraction of actual abuse occurring. For every case registered, dozens — perhaps hundreds — never reach a police station at all.
One of the most harmful things we do as a society is define domestic violence too narrowly. We have built a mental image of what abuse looks like — and anything that doesn't match that image, we dismiss. This dismissal is itself a form of violence.
The Protection of Women from Domestic Violence Act, 2005 — one of the most progressive pieces of legislation in India's history — defines domestic violence across four distinct categories under Section 3:
Hitting, slapping, kicking, pushing. The visible kind — what courts see, what cameras capture. Only one part of the full picture.
Daily humiliation, constant comparisons, threats of eviction or custody loss. Leaves no mark on the body — but marks on the mind that last far longer.
Forced physical relations, coercion, and using sex as punishment or reward. Recognised under Section 3(ii) of the DV Act — yet our criminal law remains shamefully silent on this within marriage.
No bank account of her own. Must ask permission to buy vegetables. Cannot visit her parents without approval. Under Section 3(iv), economic deprivation is legally domestic violence — and is reported the least.
The most dangerous myth about domestic violence is that it is a problem of poverty and illiteracy. We tell ourselves a comfortable story — that educated families, urban families, and "modern" families don't face this. This story is false. And its falseness has real consequences — because it allows abuse in "respectable" households to remain hidden behind the veil of social image.
Research consistently shows that domestic violence cuts across every income bracket, every education level, every caste, and religion. A woman with a postgraduate degree, working in a corporate job, can be — and many are — in deeply abusive marriages. Her education does not protect her. In fact, sometimes it is weaponized against her:
"You have a degree and you can't even manage a home." Her income is controlled. Her professional relationships are monitored and slowly restricted.
The reason educated women stay in abusive marriages is not because they are unaware. It is because they are trapped in a different way — a career, a social identity, a reputation. They know that the moment they speak up, the world will ask: "But he seemed so decent." This is what makes coercive control so effective — it is designed to be invisible to everyone except the person experiencing it.
Perhaps the question asked most often about domestic violence — and the most unfair question — is: "Why didn't she just leave?" This question reveals more about our ignorance than about her choices. Because leaving is not simple. Leaving requires money, safety, support, and a place to go. And in most abusive relationships, the abuser has systematically dismantled all of those.
Indian law has built a reasonably strong framework for protecting women from domestic violence. The problem is not the law itself. The problem is the gap between what the law says and what actually reaches the woman who needs it.
The Protection of Women from Domestic Violence Act, 2005 is the cornerstone. It is a civil law — meaning a woman does not need to file a police complaint or send anyone to jail to access its protections. She can approach a Magistrate directly and ask for:
Expanded and confirmed the right to the shared household — holding that a woman has the right to reside in the matrimonial home regardless of whether the property belongs to her husband or his parents. One of the most practically important judgments for women, because the threat of eviction is one of the most common tools of control used by abusers.
After this ruling, female relatives — including the mother-in-law — can also be named as respondents in a domestic violence case. A critical correction, because in many Indian households, abuse is orchestrated or enabled by the husband's female relatives, not just by him.
Section 498A IPC / BNS deals with cruelty by husband or his relatives — both physical and mental — and is a criminal provision. Section 125 CrPC / BNSS gives a woman the right to maintenance even during the pendency of proceedings, which is critical because economic survival is often the first concern of a woman trying to leave an abusive marriage.
The single most significant gap in Indian law concerning women's rights within marriage is the continued non-criminalization of marital rape.
Section 3(ii) of the DV Act recognises sexual abuse within marriage as a form of domestic violence — so a woman can approach a civil court for protection, maintenance, and residence rights. But the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita — like its predecessor the IPC — still retains the marital rape exception. A man who forces himself on his wife above the age of eighteen cannot be criminally prosecuted for rape.
Delivered a split verdict — one judge held the marital rape exception unconstitutional, the other upheld it. The matter is currently before the Supreme Court of India.
Civil law offers relief. Criminal law denies justice. This contradiction sends a deeply troubling message: what happened to you is serious enough for some relief — but not serious enough to be called a crime.
Research, law, and lived experience all point to the same conclusion — the problem is not just the abuser. The problem is the entire ecosystem that enables abuse and silences victims. Several things must change simultaneously:
There is, right now, a woman somewhere — in a city apartment, in a village home, in a middle-class neighbourhood — who is deciding whether today is the day she will do something. She is calculating risks, counting resources, measuring courage against fear.
She is not weak. She is navigating an impossible situation with almost nothing available to her.
The law has given her tools. The DV Act gives her shelter rights, protection orders, maintenance, and a legal name for what she is experiencing. Judgments like Satish Chander Ahuja and Hiral P. Harsora have expanded her legal standing.
But law alone cannot hold her hand at the police station. Law alone cannot stop her mother from telling her to go back. Law alone cannot undo years of being told she is worthless.
We have, for too long, asked the wrong question.
We have asked — why didn't she speak up? Why didn't she leave? Why didn't she fight back?
The question we must start asking is this:
"What did we, as a society, do to make it safe enough for her to?"
Until we can answer that honestly — the work is not done.
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