From Legislative Protection to Effective Justice: Reassessing Law, Society and Institutional Accountability
I. Introduction: From Private Family Matter to Public Legal Concern
For much of its history, Indian law treated the marital home as a space of limited legal scrutiny. A husband’s violence was routinely absorbed into the vocabulary of “family matter”, to be settled by elders rather than adjudicated by courts. The Constitution unsettled that premise. Equality before law, the prohibition of discrimination, and the guarantee of life and personal liberty do not stop at the threshold of a home, and Article 15(3) expressly permits special provision for women.[1] Parliament’s response came in stages: the insertion of cruelty by husband or relatives into the Indian Penal Code in 1983, the dowry-death offence in 1986, and, in 2005, a civil statute built around protection and residence rather than punishment alone.[2]
The vocabulary matters. “Matrimonial violence” is used here in a broad sociological sense: physical, sexual, verbal, emotional, psychological and economic abuse within marriage, including abuse by in-laws. “Domestic violence” is the statutory term in the Protection of Women from Domestic Violence Act, 2005 (PWDVA), whose Section 3 defines it by reference to harm or injury to health, safety, life, limb or well-being, and expressly includes sexual, verbal, emotional and economic abuse and harassment connected to unlawful dowry demands.[3] The statutory concept covers women in a “domestic relationship”, which extends beyond marriage; the sociological concept is narrower in relationship but wider than any single statute in the conduct it captures.
This article argues that legislative progress has been real but that the decisive variable is no longer the text of the law. It is whether a woman can obtain a timely, enforceable remedy; whether an accused person receives a fair process; and whether institutions are equipped and accountable enough to deliver both.
II. The Legal Transformation: What Has Changed?
1. The Protection of Women from Domestic Violence Act, 2005
The PWDVA’s central innovation is that it is primarily civil and protective. An “aggrieved person” may approach a Magistrate, directly or through a Protection Officer, and seek relief without having to prove an offence beyond reasonable doubt or secure a conviction.[4] The menu of relief in Sections 18 to 22 includes protection orders, residence orders, monetary relief, custody orders and compensation, and Section 23 permits interim and ex parte orders. The Act directs the Magistrate to endeavour to dispose of an application within sixty days of the first hearing, and breach of a protection order is itself an offence under Section 31.[5]
The Act also distributes responsibility. Protection Officers receive complaints, prepare domestic incident reports and connect women to services; registered service providers offer medical, shelter and counselling support; Magistrates grant relief; and the Act contemplates free legal services under the Legal Services Authorities Act, 1987, which already entitles women to legal aid.[6]
The most consequential right is the right to reside in the shared household under Section 17, which protects a woman from dispossession irrespective of title. Its practical limit is that it is a right of residence, not of ownership: courts must balance it against competing property interests, and a residence order is only as useful as the police and court machinery that enforces it.[7] The Act complements rather than duplicates other remedies. Relief under it may be claimed alongside, and is expressly not in derogation of, proceedings for maintenance, divorce or criminal prosecution.[8]
2. Section 498A IPC and Sections 85–86 of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita, 2023
Section 489A made cruelty by a husband or his relatives a cognizable, non-bailable offence punishable with up to three years’ imprisonment. Its significance was symbolic as well as practical: it told investigators and courts that sustained cruelty, including mental cruelty and harassment for dowry, was a crime and not a domestic adjustment.
The Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita, 2023 (BNS) came into force on 1 July 2024. Section 85 punishes cruelty by a husband or his relative with up to three years’ imprisonment and fine, and Section 86 now carries the definition of cruelty that formerly sat in the Explanation to Section 498A: wilful conduct likely to drive a woman to suicide or cause grave injury or danger to life, limb or health, and harassment aimed at coercing her or her relatives to meet an unlawful demand for property.[9] The Supreme Court, in a judgment of 3 May 2024, described the new text as a verbatim reproduction of Section 498A and asked the Union to consider whether changes were needed to address concerns about exaggerated complaints.[10]
The transition must be stated carefully. The BNS does not apply to offences committed before 1 July 2024; Article 20(1) of the Constitution bars retrospective enhancement of penal liability, and the BNS and the Bharatiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita, 2023 (BNSS) contain savings provisions for pending proceedings. Conduct before that date is therefore still charged under Section 498A, while conduct after it falls under Section 85. Because the substantive offence was carried over almost unchanged, the doctrinal consequences are modest, but the procedural framework (arrest, investigation, trial) now runs under the BNSS and the Bharatiya Sakshya Adhiniyam, 2023 (BSA).
The misuse debate deserves a principled treatment. Courts have repeatedly warned against the tendency to implicate distant relatives through omnibus allegations, and have insisted that specific roles be disclosed.[11] These are legitimate concerns about evidence and proportionality. They are not findings about complainants as a class, and an acquittal does not, without more, establish that a complaint was false.
3. The Dowry Prohibition Act, 1961
The Dowry Prohibition Act, 1961 criminalises giving, taking and abetting dowry (Section 3), demanding it (Section 4), and advertising it (Section 4A); makes offences cognizable and non-bailable (Section 8); places the burden of proving the absence of an offence on the person who took or abetted dowry (Section 8A); and provides for Dowry Prohibition Officers (Section 8B).[12] It sits alongside, and must not be conflated with, dowry death (Section 80 BNS, formerly Section 304B IPC, with the presumption now in Section 118 BSA) and cruelty linked to dowry (Section 85 BNS). They protect different interests: the first targets the transaction, the second a death within seven years of marriage, the third conduct towards a wife. The persistence of all three in the statistics discussed below shows that prohibition has not displaced the practice.
4. Constitutional and judicial development
The constitutional case against tolerating marital violence rests on Articles 14 and 15 (formal and substantive equality), Article 21 (life, dignity, bodily integrity, privacy) and Article 39A (equal justice and free legal aid). The Supreme Court’s dignity jurisprudence, including its recognition of privacy and autonomy and its rejection of the idea that a wife is an extension of her husband, has given these provisions content in the marital context.[13] Courts have used them to read residence, maintenance and access to remedies as part of a woman’s entitlement, and to resist the older assumption that cruelty is an incident of marriage. Section III examines the decisions that carried this doctrine.
5. Social and institutional impact
The demonstrated gains are mostly legal and institutional: violence within marriage is now an actionable wrong with named remedies and officials. NFHS-5 (fieldwork 2019–21) recorded spousal violence at 29.3 per cent among ever-married women aged 18–49, a fall from 31.2 per cent in NFHS-4, and press reports of NFHS-6 describe a further fall to about 22.3 per cent.[14] These are survey estimates of prevalence, and they do not by themselves show that the laws caused the decline; income, education, urbanisation and changing norms are all plausible contributors. The gains in awareness and reporting are plausible but difficult to isolate, and the figures cannot support the claim that legislation has transformed attitudes across society. They support a narrower one: the law has created entitlements that did not previously exist.
III. Important Judicial Decisions
1. V.D. Bhanot v. Savita Bhanot (2012) 3 SCC 183. A wife sought relief under the PWDVA for events that began before it came into force. The issue was whether the Act could apply to conduct pre-dating it. The Court held that the wife’s right to relief arises from the continuing nature of the domestic relationship and the conduct complained of, so the Act was not confined to acts after 26 October 2006. Its significance is access: women already living with violence were not shut out of the new remedy. It does not displace the principle that criminal liability cannot be created retrospectively.[15]
2. S.R. Batra v. Taruna Batra (2007) 3 SCC 169, and Satish Chander Ahuja v. Sneha Ahuja (2021) 1 SCC 414. In Batra, a wife claimed a right to live in her mother-in-law’s house, which was never owned by or let to the husband. The Court read “shared household” as the husband’s own or jointly owned or rented home, and denied the claim. Ahuja, a three-judge decision, held that this reading was erroneous and that the definition in Section 2(s) is not confined to property owned or tenanted by the husband; a household where the woman lived in a domestic relationship may qualify. The practical effect is to protect women from being excluded because title lies with in-laws, subject to the balancing of competing rights. Anyone reading Batra today must treat it as overruled on this point.[16]
3. Hiral P. Harsora v. Kusum Narottamdas Harsora (2016) 10 SCC 165. The issue was whether the words “adult male” in the proviso to Section 2(q), which confined “respondents” to adult male persons, were constitutional. The Court struck them down as arbitrary and discriminatory because they excluded women relatives who actually perpetrate abuse. The decision broadened the class of respondents without altering the fact that the aggrieved person must be a woman; the Act remains a gender-specific statute.[17]
4. Rajnesh v. Neha (2021) 2 SCC 324. The Court addressed overlapping maintenance proceedings and chronic delay in orders and their enforcement. It required a standard affidavit of assets and liabilities from both parties, directed that maintenance be adjusted across proceedings to avoid double recovery, and set out principles for interim maintenance and execution of orders. Its significance lies in making maintenance a predictable and enforceable entitlement. Its directions are procedural and administrative; their effect depends on uniform adoption by trial courts.[18]
5. Arnesh Kumar v. State of Bihar (2014) 8 SCC 273. Invoking concerns about mechanical arrests in Section 498A cases, the Court directed police not to arrest automatically and to satisfy themselves of the need for arrest by reference to the statutory criteria, and directed Magistrates to scrutinise the reasons recorded before authorising detention. It also required notice of appearance in cases punishable with up to seven years. These safeguards, now reflected in Section 35 BNSS, apply to all such offences and are not limited to matrimonial cases. Their limitation is that compliance depends on police culture and Magistrates’ diligence.[19]
6. Social Action Forum for Manav Adhikar v. Union of India (2018) 10 SCC 443. A three-judge bench reviewed directions issued in Rajesh Sharma v. State of U.P. (2017), which had required committee screening of Section 498A complaints before arrest. The Court set aside the committee mechanism as beyond the judicial role in the presence of a statute, held that existing safeguards under Arnesh Kumar and the Code of Criminal Procedure should be followed, and clarified the circumstances in which parties may seek quashing on settlement. The case is the leading authority on the limits of judicial guideline-making in this field.[20]
7. Shivangi Bansal v. Sahib Bansal (decided 22 July 2025; reported as 2025 LiveLaw (SC) 735 and 2025 SCC OnLine SC 1494). In transfer petitions between an estranged couple with numerous cross-cases, a two-judge bench directed that the Allahabad High Court’s guidelines in Mukesh Bansal v. State of U.P. (2022), which provide for a two-month cooling period and referral to district Family Welfare Committees in Section 498A cases, should remain in effect and be implemented. Commentators have questioned how this sits with the three-judge decision in Social Action Forum, and the scope of the direction beyond Uttar Pradesh is contested. I could not verify any later larger-bench ruling or clarification up to 26 October 2026; the position should be checked before reliance.[21]
IV. What Challenges Remain?
Reading the numbers. NCRB’s Crime in India 2023, published in September 2025, recorded 4,48,211 crimes against women, of which 1,33,676 (29.8 per cent) were cruelty by husband or relatives; it also recorded 6,156 dowry deaths and 15,489 cases under the Dowry Prohibition Act.[22] Crime in India 2024, released on 6 May 2026, recorded 4,41,534 crimes against women (a 1.5 per cent decline), about 1,20,227 cruelty cases and 5,737 dowry deaths; the 2024 data straddle the IPC and BNS and should be read as a transitional year.[23] These are police- and court-registered cases. They measure what reached the system, not prevalence, and a fall in registrations may reflect either less violence or less reporting. They also cannot be equated with convictions: a registered case is an allegation, an acquittal is not proof of falsity, and a conviction requires proof beyond reasonable doubt, which is demanding in cases resting on private conduct.[24]
Delay and enforcement. Press analysis of NCRB’s 2024 tables reports over 26 lakh cases of crimes against women pending trial, with acquittals outnumbering convictions among cases decided that year.[25] Pendency in the criminal system mirrors delay in civil remedies: the sixty-day target in the PWDVA is aspirational in many courts, and recovering unpaid maintenance often requires repeated execution proceedings.
Economic and social barriers. Economic dependence, lack of housing, and family pressure to preserve the marriage make leaving costly. NFHS-5 data reported in the press indicate that most women who experience violence never seek help from anyone, and the figure for formal help is far lower.[26] The PWDVA’s dedicated register is also telling: NCRB recorded only 632 cases under it in 2023, against over 1.3 lakh under Section 498A, but because PWDVA proceedings are civil applications before Magistrates and not police cases, this does not measure use of the Act.[27]
Coordination, children and fairness. Police, Protection Officers, shelters, legal services bodies and courts frequently work in silos, and children’s safety and welfare are seldom assessed systematically when orders are made. On the other side of the ledger, wholesale implication of in-laws, including elderly relatives, and arrests without need impose real costs; the Arnesh Kumar safeguards respond to those costs. Two errors must be avoided together: treating isolated misuse stories as proof that complaints are generally suspect, and treating every allegation as established before evidence is tested.
V. What Reforms Are Needed?
The proposals below are practical and mostly administrative. The table identifies the problem, the responsible institution, the action and whether legislation is needed.
| Reform | Problem | Institution | Proposed action | Route |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1. Time-bound relief | Delay in interim relief and enforcement | High Courts, State governments | Dedicated PWDVA and maintenance benches or time-tracked dockets; electronic execution tracking; routine use of Rajnesh affidavits | Administrative |
| 2. Legal assistance and shelter | Women unaware of or unable to access remedies | NALSA, SLSAs, DLSAs, State governments | Legal-aid desks at courts and police stations; funded shelters and counselling; referral protocols | Administrative, with budget |
| 3. Institutional coordination | Silos between police, Protection Officers and courts | State Home and Women & Child Departments | Full-time, trained Protection Officers; joint training for police and Magistrates; shared case-tracking | Administrative |
| 4. Digital evidence | Authentication disputes defeat valid claims | Police, forensic labs, courts | Preservation protocols and early imaging of devices; guidance on BSA certificates | Administrative |
| 5. Prevention | Normalisation of violence and dowry | Education and Women & Child Departments | Consent and respectful-relationship content in curricula; financial-literacy programmes; awareness of remedies | Administrative |
| 6. Evidence-based review | Policy driven by anecdote | Ministry of Women and Child Development, NCRB, Law Commission | Audits of PWDVA, Section 85 BNS and dowry law outcomes with stakeholder consultation | Administrative |
| 7. Procedural safeguards | Retaliation against complainants; unnecessary arrests | Police, Magistrates, High Courts | Enforce BNSS Section 35 safeguards; recorded reasons for arrest; protection against intimidation of witnesses | Administrative, plus targeted legislation if gaps shown |
| 8. Inclusive protection | Gaps for men, elderly spouses and others | Parliament, State governments | Strengthen existing remedies (criminal law, maintenance for parents, senior-citizen law); consider whether a gender-neutral civil law is warranted | Legislative |
| 9. Children and dependants | Welfare rarely assessed | Courts, Child Welfare Committees | Safety planning and welfare assessment at the time of orders | Administrative |
| 10. Accountability | No public indicators | MWCD, State governments | Publish time-to-order, enforcement rates, shelter capacity and Protection Officer vacancies annually | Administrative |
VI. A Critical Balance: Protection, Accountability and Due Process
Effective reform must avoid two failures.
The first is dismissal: treating complaints as presumptively exaggerated because misuse stories circulate widely. That approach repeats the older tradition of disbelieving women and discourages the very reporting the system needs. The second is abandonment of fairness: treating every allegation as proven, arresting by reflex and resisting scrutiny of evidence. That approach punishes unevenly, damages the credibility of genuine claims and invites judicial backlash of the kind the committee-screening litigation illustrates.
These objectives are mutually reinforcing. Prompt interim protection reduces the pressure that drives escalation. Careful investigation yields evidence that survives trial. Specific pleadings protect relatives with no role. Reasoned arrest decisions protect liberty and preserve confidence in the process. Trials that decide on evidence produce convictions that stand on appeal, which is the best form of deterrence.
The analysis should also avoid false equivalence. Survey data consistently show that, in the large majority of reported physical violence against women, the perpetrator is the husband or partner, and the evidence on prevalence is gendered in direction.[28] Acknowledging this does not require denying that men, elderly parents and other relatives may also be victims or wrongly accused. It requires that different experiences be measured separately and answered with proportionate remedies.
VII. Conclusion: From Legal Recognition to Meaningful Justice
India has moved, in four decades, from silence to an extensive statutory architecture: a protective civil law, a criminal offence of cruelty carried into the new criminal codes, a dowry law, and a body of constitutional doctrine that speaks of dignity and residence. That is an achievement, and it should not be diminished.
But a statute is a promise, and a promise is measured by performance. The right yardstick is not the number of provisions or the length of sentences. It is how long a woman waits for an interim order; whether she is housed on the night she leaves; whether the order for maintenance is paid; whether the police and Magistrates handle her complaint with attention to both evidence and fairness; whether the accused receives a fair hearing and is acquitted when the evidence fails; and whether the next generation grows up expecting equality at home. These are questions of administration, data and institutional accountability, not of more severe law.
Notes and References
[1] Constitution of India, arts 14, 15(1), 15(3), 21, 39A.
[2] Criminal Law (Second Amendment) Act 1983 (inserting Indian Penal Code 1860, s 498A); Dowry Prohibition (Amendment) Act 1986 (inserting Indian Penal Code 1860, s 304B and amending the Dowry Prohibition Act 1961).
[3] Protection of Women from Domestic Violence Act 2005, s 3 and Explanations I–IV.
[4] Protection of Women from Domestic Violence Act 2005, ss 2(a), 2(f), 2(q), 12.
[5] Protection of Women from Domestic Violence Act 2005, ss 12(5), 18–23, 31.
[6] Protection of Women from Domestic Violence Act 2005, ss 6–10 (shelter, medical facilities, Protection Officers, service providers); Legal Services Authorities Act 1987, s 12(c).
[7] Protection of Women from Domestic Violence Act 2005, ss 2(s), 17, 19; Satish Chander Ahuja v Sneha Ahuja (2021) 1 SCC 414 (Supreme Court of India).
[8] Protection of Women from Domestic Violence Act 2005, ss 26, 36.
[9] Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita 2023, ss 85, 86 and 358 (repeal and savings); Bharatiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita 2023, s 531; Constitution of India, art 20(1). The BNS came into force on 1 July 2024.
[10] Supreme Court of India, judgment of 3 May 2024 (Pardiwala and Misra JJ) quashing a dowry-harassment case and directing that copies be sent to the Union law and home secretaries (I believe the case is Achin Gupta v State of Haryana, but I could not verify the citation). Reported: Outlook India, “Cruelty Against Woman: SC Asks Centre To Consider Making Changes In Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita”
[11] Preeti Gupta v State of Jharkhand (2010) 7 SCC 667; Kahkashan Kausar v State of Bihar (2022) 6 SCC 599 (both Supreme Court of India).
[12] Dowry Prohibition Act 1961, ss 3, 4, 4A, 8, 8A, 8B; Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita 2023, s 80; Bharatiya Sakshya Adhiniyam 2023, s 118.
[13] Justice K.S. Puttaswamy (Retd) v Union of India (2017) 10 SCC 1; Joseph Shine v Union of India (2019) 3 SCC 39 (Supreme Court of India).
[14] National Family Health Survey-5 (2019–21), Ministry of Health and Family Welfare / International Institute for Population Sciences (spousal violence 29.3%, NFHS-4: 31.2%), as reported in Manipal Academy of Higher Education researcher profile summarising NFHS-4/5 comparison
[15] V.D. Bhanot v Savita Bhanot (2012) 3 SCC 183 (Supreme Court of India).
[16] S.R. Batra v Taruna Batra (2007) 3 SCC 169; Satish Chander Ahuja v Sneha Ahuja (2021) 1 SCC 414 (Supreme Court of India).
[17] Hiral P. Harsora v Kusum Narottamdas Harsora (2016) 10 SCC 165 (Supreme Court of India).
[18] Rajnesh v Neha (2021) 2 SCC 324 (Supreme Court of India).
[19] Arnesh Kumar v State of Bihar (2014) 8 SCC 273 (Supreme Court of India); Bharatiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita 2023, s 35.
[20] Social Action Forum for Manav Adhikar v Union of India (2018) 10 SCC 443 (Supreme Court of India, three-judge bench), considering Rajesh Sharma v State of UP (2017) (Supreme Court of India).
[21] Shivangi Bansal v Sahib Bansal (Supreme Court of India, 22 July 2025), 2025 SCC OnLine SC 1494; 2025 LiveLaw (SC) 735; Mukesh Bansal v State of UP 2022 SCC OnLine All 395 (Allahabad High Court). Reports: SCC Online Blog https://www.scconline.com/blog/?p=354351. Critical commentary (secondary): Law and Other Things, “When Procedure Becomes Policy” https://lawandotherthings.com/when-procedure-becomes-policy-a-constitutional-critique-of-family-welfare-committees-in-section-498a-cases/.
[22] National Crime Records Bureau, Crime in India 2023
[23] National Crime Records Bureau, Crime in India 2024
[24] NCRB tables record registered cases, charge-sheeting and court disposal; they do not measure prevalence. See Ashoka University CEDA, “What India’s 2024 crime statistics reveal (and miss) about violence against women”
[25] Feminism in India, “NCRB Report 2024: Violence Against Women Is Not An Exception; It Is The Norm”, 1 June 2026 https://feminisminindia.com/2026/06/01/ncrb-report-2024-violence-against-women-is-not-an-exception-it-is-the-norm/ (secondary analysis of NCRB 2024 tables; trial pendency 26,40,698; 1,23,340 acquittals and 45,832 convictions across all crimes against women). Acquittal figures here are not specific to cruelty and are not evidence of false complaints.
[26] NFHS-5 help-seeking findings, as reported in Maktoob Media
[27] NCRB, Crime in India 2023, 632 cases under the Protection of Women from Domestic Violence Act 2005 (see [22]). No verified national dataset of PWDVA civil applications was located.
[28] NFHS-5 findings that in over 80% of reported physical violence against women the perpetrator was the husband, as reported in Maktoob Media (see [26]). Primary NFHS-5 tables should be consulted for the precise definition.
Rinku Maity
ProfessionalContributor at Advocate Council of India, sharing practical legal knowledge for advocates, law students and citizens.