case study of domestic violence in india

Famous Cases of Domestic Violence in India

In many nations, the phrase "domestic violence" is used to describe violence between intimate partners, but it also includes the abuse of children, elders, and any household member. Although domestic violence does not specifically target women, there are many instances of violence and abuse against women, especially when it comes from people the victims know. At least 30% of all women in relationships have experienced physical or sexual violence by their partners, according to the World Health Organization, which estimates that one in every three women will experience physical or sexual violence in their lifetime, world over.

Domestic Violence in India

A crime against women is reported in India every 1.7 minutes, and a woman experiences domestic abuse every 4.4 minutes, according to the National Crime Research Bureau's (NCRB) 2018 Crime in India Report . According to the survey, it also came out on top in the areas of violence against women. According to the report, more crimes against women were committed in India in 2018—89,097 cases—than in 2017—86,001 incidents.

According to the National Family Health Survey (NFHS-4), 2015–16, 30% of Indian women between the ages of 15 and 49 had been the victims of physical abuse. According to the study, an alarming 83 percent of married women who report enduring physical, sexual, or emotional abuse name their husbands as the primary offenders, followed by abuse from their husbands' moms (56 percent), fathers (33 percent), and brothers (27 percent).

These numbers don't fully represent the information on violence against women. This is primarily due to the predominance of traditional societal standards and the stigmatisation of victims of sexual or domestic abuse, which leads to a vast underreporting of incidents. In addition, women feel uneasy going to the police because they fear that if their partners are detained, they would be released to even worse abuse and that in the interim, their in-laws or other people might harass them.

Top controversial Domestic Violence Cases in India

Lalita toppo v. the state of jharkhand and anr. (2018), facts of the case.

The Complainant, who was not the Respondent's legally wedded wife, approached the court to obtain maintenance under the terms of the Protection of Women from Domestic Violence Act, 2005, assuming that she would not be permitted to maintenance under Section 125 of the Code of Criminal Procedure, 1973, in the case of Lalita Toppo v. the State of Jharkhand and Anr. (2018), which was heard by the Supreme Court of India.

The appellant in this case was in a live-in relationship with her partner, with whom she had a child. The Gumla Family Court granted the appellant's request for support when the couple separated, granting her Rs 2000 per month and Rs 1000 for her child. In response to the appellant's appeal, the High Court reversed the family court's decision and ruled in the partner's favour. Following that, the Appellant went to the Supreme Court.

Issue involved in the Case

Can a live-in partner file a maintenance claim under the 2005 Domestic Violence Act?

Decision made by the court

A live-in partner will be entitled to even more remedy than that provided for under Section 125 of the Code of Criminal Procedure, 1973, according to a three-judge Supreme Court panel made up of the then-CJI Ranjan Gogoi, Justices U.U. Lalit, and K.M. Joseph. The bench referred to the provisions of the Domestic Violence Act and stated that even though the petitioner in this case is not the legally married wife and is not therefore required to be maintained under Section 125 of the Code of Criminal Procedure, she would have a remedy to seek maintenance under the Act.

The Court further noted that, in accordance with the Domestic Violence Act's provisions, economic abuse is also considered a form of domestic violence.

Inder Raj Malik vs Sunita Malik (1986)

Sunita Malik, the complainant in this instance, was married to Inder Raj Mailk, the respondent. After their marriage, the complainant Sunita was maltreated, starved, and mistreated by her husband and in-laws, especially during festivals, in order to obtain more and more money and possessions.

She was once subjected to severe physical and mental abuse in her marital house to the point of fainting, but no doctor was contacted for a check-up.

If Sunita Malik didn't force her parents to sell their land in Hauz Qazi, her mother and brother-in-law threatened to kill her and abduct her. As a result, it was determined that the complainant, Sunita Mailk, had endured terrible treatment from her husband and in-laws, including physical torture. To coerce Sunita Malik or anyone connected to her into fulfilling an unlawful obligation for both moveable and immovable property, harassment was used.

Issues involved in the case

Are the provisions of Article 20(2) of the Indian Constitution's Double Jeopardy clause applicable to Section 498A of the Indian Penal Code from 1908 and Section 4 of the Dowry Prohibition Act from 1961?
Does the Indian Penal Code, 1908's Section 498A violate the law?

Decision made by the Court

The Delhi High Court had to determine in this case whether a defendant may be found guilty under dowry Laws . The Court determined that a person is not subject to double jeopardy if they are found guilty under both Section 4 of the Dowry Prohibition Act of 1956 and Section 498A of the IPC. The Court determined that Section 498A, IPC, and Section 4 of the Dowry Prohibition Act are separate laws since Section 4 of the Dowry Prohibition Act only punishes acts of cruelty committed against newlywed women, whereas Section 498A also punishes the mere demand of dowry. This leads one to the conclusion that a person could be charged with a crime under Section 4 of the Dowry Prohibition Act as well as Section 498A of the Indian Penal Code.

Hiralal P Harsora and Ors vs Kusum Narottamdas Harsora and Ors (2016)

The plaintiffs in this case were a mother-daughter duo named Pushpa and Kusum Narottam Harsora. They made a complaint saying that domestic abuse was committed by Pradeep (son/brother), his wife, and her two sisters. Since a complaint may only be made against a "adult male" in accordance with Section 2(q), the Respondents requested that the Metropolitan Magistrate free Pradeep's wife and two sisters/daughters. Application from the Respondents was turned down.

The definitions under Sections 2(a), 2(f), and 2(s) of the Protection of Women from Domestic Violence Act shall be taken into consideration when reading Section 2(q) of the aforementioned Act, the Bombay High Court concluded. In essence, this ensured that both the "adult male member" and female family members may be the subject of a complaint. However, a domestic abuse complaint cannot be made exclusively against the female household members. Male adult must be a co-respondent. As a result, the Court did not define "adult male person" further. The mother and daughter duo then petitioned the Supreme Court for a writ.

Whether women are subject to liability under the 2005 Domestic Violence Act?

The adult man was eliminated from the definition of "Respondent" by the Supreme Court, who ruled that it was not based on any discernible distinction that had anything to do with the goal that was being pursued. In the same case, the Supreme Court made it clear that women and children are among those who may file claims for relief under the DV Act. The phrase "adult male person" in Section 2(q) cannot be used to limit the word "Respondent" in Section 2(q) or those who can be considered perpetrators of violence against women or against whom remedies under the DV Act are enforceable. As a result, even against female members and minors, the DV Act's remedies are available.

Sandhya Wankhede vs Manoj Bhimrao Wankhede (2011)

After getting married in 2005, the appellant Sandhya resided with R1, R2, and R3 for almost a year, which created issues in her marriage. In accordance with Section 498A of the Indian Penal Code, she reported her husband to the police for hitting her. Additionally, she filed a request for maintenance payment from R1 against all three Respondents, which the First Class Judicial Magistrate approved. Additionally, none of the Respondents were permitted to attempt to evict the Complainant from her marital residence. R1 had filed criminal appeals and applications, but these were turned down by the Sessions Judge and the High Court. R2 and R3 submitted an application to the First Class Magistrate, but it was turned down. In their appeal, they argued that women could not be respondents in DV cases. The Appellant was able to be evicted from her marital residence, which was wholly owned by R2, when the Court agreed and overturned the decision. It was not a "shared house" as a result. However, the Court ordered R1 to provide separate lodging or, in the absence of that, to make further money for it. The determination that "females" are not included under "Respondents" was the basis for the Sessions Court's response to the appellant's appeal.

The HC adopted a similar attitude, striking the names of R2 and R3 from the proceedings, and directing the Appellant to vacate the marital residence. This is why the appeal was made.

Does the Domestic Violence Act only allow complaints to be made against adult males and not the husband's female relatives, such as the mother-in-law and sister-in-law?

But in the aforementioned case, the Supreme Court answered the query by holding that the provision to Section 2(q)'s does not bar female relatives of the spouse or male partners from filing a complaint under the Domestic Violence Act. So, in addition to the adult male, the adult male's female relative may also be the target of complaints.

VD Bhanot vs Savita Bhanot (2012)

The Respondent (wife) in this case was ejected from her marital home on July 4, 2005, after the parties' marriage on August 23, 1980.

Then, in accordance with Section 12 of the DV Act, the Respondent submitted a petition to the Magistrate.

The Magistrate gave the wife temporary relief in the amount of Rs 6,000 and thereafter issued a protection/residence order in accordance with Sections 18 and 19 of the DV Act to safeguard her right to live in her marital home in Mathura.

The husband, who had been in the military, had retired and had submitted an application to have his wife removed from the public housing.

In light of this, the Magistrate ordered the petitioner to provide his wife permission to live on the first floor of their marital residence or, in the event that neither of those options is practical, to locate alternative housing nearby or to pay Rs 10,000 in rental fees.

Since she disagreed with the Magistrate's ruling, she preferred to appeal.

The appeal was dismissed, and the Additional Sessions court stated that "the claim of a woman living in a domestic relationship or residing together prior to 26.10.2006 was not maintainable" since "the applicant left the married residence on 4.7.2005 and the Act came into effect on 26.10.2006."

The HC looked at this legal matter after receiving an appeal. Despite the fact that the action was done before the Act went into effect, it was ordered to be maintained.

Does The Domestic Abuse Act, 2005 include domestic violence victims who were hurt before that year?

The Supreme Court ruled in accordance with the HC's justifications and stated that:

The Delhi High Court, in our opinion, has also correctly decided that even a wife who had previously shared a household but was not doing so at the time the Act went into effect would still be entitled to the protection of the Domestic Violence Act, 2005. A suitable portion of the petitioner's home and 10,000 rupees per month for her support were granted by the court due to the respondent's advanced age. The Act should be interpreted in favour of women who are domestic violence victims because its purpose was to protect women from abuse. The Legislature wanted to extend protection to women who had experienced domestic abuse before the Act was passed. The definitions of "aggrieved individuals" and "domestic relationship" in the Act make this clear.

Since the Domestic Violence Act, 2005 is a civil remedy and the criminal offences covered by the Act's penalties cannot have occurred before it went into effect, retroactively executing the Act is not in violation of Article 20(1) of the Indian Constitution.

Rajesh Kumar and Others vs State of UP (2017)

Rajesh Sharma, the appellant in this case, married Sneha Sharma, the respondent, on November 28, 2012. Sneha's father did his utmost to provide the dowry, but the appellants weren't happy with it. They started berating or harassing the complainant and demanded a car and Rs. 3,000,000. The Appellant had left the Complainant at her home because the pregnancy had been aborted. The Appellant was summoned on that day in accordance with Sections 498A and 323 of the IPC. The Appellant and his family were sued by the Appellant's wife. She asserted that she was tortured by her husband and his family, who wanted dowry when she was pregnant, leading to the termination of her pregnancy.

The High Court turned down the Appellants' appeal asking for the summons to be cancelled. As a result, the Appellants appealed the High Court's ruling to the Supreme Court.

On the other hand, the Appellants had no plans to demand dowry.

Is it necessary to reduce the propensity for involving the entire family in settling a marital conflict?
Is the IPC's Section 498A being misused or not?

In this instance, it was decided that no one would be imprisoned until the "Family Welfare Committee" dealt with Section 498A of the IPC and delivered justice to the complainant in order to protect the innocent person, in this case the husband as well as their relatives. The committee's main objective is to distinguish between legitimate and fraudulent cases. to assist those who have been the target of bogus complaints. The defendant who wasn't in the area cannot be excused from appearing in court personally and must do so through video conferencing.

The egregious misapplication of Section 498A of the IPC has been acknowledged by the Supreme Court. In this case, the Supreme Court ruled that the dowry-related offences should be prosecuted and that the husband and married man should not be harassed or persecuted any more. Additionally, this group wants to ensure that the rights of innocent persons are restored.

Arrest and court remand are not the answer since "the spouse and his family members may have various points of view in the conflict." Every legal system's ultimate objective is to protect the innocent while punishing the evil.

Arnesh Kumar vs The state of Bihar & Anr (2014)

Arnesh Kumar (Appellant) and Sweta Kiran (Respondent) were married on July 1, 2007, and this is their case. Sweta Kiran said in court that her in-laws demanded Rs. 8 lakhs, a Maruti car, an air conditioner, a television, and other stuff, and that when Arnesh Kumar learned of this, he supported his mother and threatened to marry someone else. She further asserted that because the dowry demand was not satisfied, she was kicked out of her marital home. Arnesh Kumar denied the allegations and requested anticipatory bail, however both the learned Sessions Judge and the High Court rejected his request. As a result, Arnesh Kumar petitioned the Supreme Court for special leave.

If a person is suspected of committing a cognizable offence, must a police officer make an arrest in response to a complaint?
What remedies are offered to a person if a woman takes advantage of section 498A of the IPC?
Should the Appellant be given a promise to appear bail?

The appellant was given conditional interim discharge by the Supreme Court. The Apex Court said that “ Section 498A is a cognizable and non-bailable offence and has lent it a dubious place of pride amongst the provisions that are used as weapons rather than shield by disgruntled wives. The simplest way to harass is to get the husband and his relatives arrested under this provision. ” 1,97,762 persons were detained in India in 2012 for breaking Section 498A of the IPC, as reported in the "Crime in India 2012 Statistics." Charge-sheeting rates for cases covered by Section 498 A of the IPC can reach 93.6 percent, although conviction rates are just about 15%. This information unequivocally shows how this component has been misused. The easiest way to stop harassment is to use this clause to imprison the spouse and his relatives. The Apex Court gave some necessary instructions for Police to follow before holding a person in order to deter unjustified arrests of accused.

Bibi Parwana Khatoon vs State of Bihar (2017)

According to the facts of this case, a woman was slain by her husband and her relatives who set her on fire. The district court and the High Court rendered decisions against the husband and his family in a case that was brought against them. The victim's brother-in-law and sister-in-law then filed an appeal with the Supreme Court challenging the conviction.

Do the appellants share the same criminal intent as the offender?

The bench decided that both the lower courts made legal errors in deciding that the charge under Section 304B read with Section 34 of the Indian Penal Code, 1860 held against the current Appellants after hearing the case and examining the facts.

The deceased's sister-in-law and brother-in-law, the current Appellants, cannot be established to have abused the victim in exchange for any such dowry demand based on the material provided.

Furthermore, it cannot be established by circumstantial evidence that the appellants and the deceased's spouse shared any common motives in the conduct of the crime.

Furthermore, it is abundantly clear from the supporting documentation that they once lived in a different village.

Kamlesh Devi vs Jaipal and Ors (2019)

According to the petitioner Kamlesh Devi in this case, she and the Respondents are related and have lived on the same property together for a long time. The petitioner has three children—Urmila, Anusaya, and Gaytri—and her spouse is a retired BSF officer. The petitioner's two unmarried daughters, Anusaya and Gaytri, are students at Krishna Nagar College. Respondents Jaipal, Krishan Kumar, and Sandeep followed the Petitioner's daughters Anusaya and Gaytri to their college, insulted them, and engaged in indecent behaviour with them. They have also established a group and are argumentative people.

The Respondents' written apology was presented on 5.8.2008 in front of respected villagers as a result of Sube Singh, the petitioner's spouse, also filing a complaint against them with the Sarpanch of Village Gaud. After a brief period of normalcy, they quickly resumed their offensive behaviour. As a result, the complaint was submitted after exhausting all other avenues for domestic abuse protection.

The Trial Court found that none of the witnesses on record proved a fact to the effect that the Respondents and the petitioner were sharing a home and that the Respondents had engaged in domestic abuse against them after considering the provisions of the Act.

The trial court further decided that no allegations of violence of any kind were made against the property of the joint home. The Ld. Magistrate threw out the case. An appeal that was brought before the High Court was also denied.

If the Respondents are accountable for domestic abuse?

The High Court rightly found that the components of domestic abuse were totally absent in this case, according to the Supreme Court. There is no shared residence between the petitioner and respondents. Unspecific allegations state that the respondents are relatives. Between the Respondents and the petitioner, there isn't even a whisper. They appear to live nearby. The special leave petition was thus rejected.

Ajay Kumar vs Lata Sharuti (2019)

The Respondent and the Appellant Lata used to reside together in a Hindu Joint Family Property; the Appellant is the Respondent's brother-in-law, or more specifically, his brother's widow. There do not appear to be any provisions in the Act that compel the Appellant to provide support to the Brother's wife, according to the lawsuit submitted to the Supreme Court. He wouldn't have to pay the maintenance unless they were partners in a firm.

In accordance with Section 12(1) of the Domestic Violence Act, a person may ask a magistrate for assistance or financial compensation for losses suffered by her or her child as a result of domestic violence. However, this exclusion does not apply to maintenance orders made pursuant to Section 125 of the Code of Criminal Procedure or any other law.

The woman claimed that after her husband passed away, she was forced out of her marital home and evicted along with her child, leaving her and her child without any means of support.

Can my brother-in-law be considered a "Respondent" as defined by Section 2(q) of the DV Act?

In this case, the Supreme Court decided that a brother-in-law could pay maintenance to a widow under the Domestic Violence Act, 2005. The Supreme Court rejected the Appellant's claim that any adult male who is or has has been in a domestic relationship with a partner against whom the remedy is sought qualifies as a "Respondent" under Section 2(q) of the Protection Women from DV Act. The woman and her brother-in-law were defined as having a domestic relationship by the Supreme Court, who also declared that they were a single family.

A very promising piece of legislation that combines civil and criminal penalties to provide effective remedies to women who become victims of domestic abuse is the Domestic Violence Act, 2005 and the provisions of the Indian Penal Code, 1860. The law, among other things, contains provisions for protection officers, medical facilities, and no-cost orders to help wronged women defend themselves and their loved ones. The Act is not without problems, though. It is obvious that the Act's implementation has to be improved.

In particular, if the person who has been wronged comes from a low-income or socially disadvantaged area, officers commonly fail to file an First Information Report (FIR), which is the first step in starting a police investigation. It is also true that the DV Act has not adequately addressed the problems that both men and women face in relation to domestic violence, and that the law is usually implemented incorrectly when it is. In order to prevent domestic violence from creating fear in the hearts of innocent people, as most men do, and from providing the other gender a tool for extortion, society needs more gender-neutral laws that treat men and women equally in these situations. The DV Act initially seems to be biased against women. To prevent abuse, advance gender equality, and provide just justice, the DV Act should be revised to include more gender-neutral provisions.

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Domestic violence
Domestic Violence Act
Women's rights

Top 10 domestic violence cases

This article has been written by Ayush Tiwari , a student of Symbiosis Law School, NOIDA. This article explains what is domestic violence, what are the legal provisions regarding domestic violence in India and top domestic violence cases.

It has been published by Rachit Garg.

Table of Contents

What is domestic violence

Domestic violence is defined as a violent control exercised by one individual over another. It is also referred to as building control and terror in a relationship via various sorts of abuse. Torture can be psychological, sexual, economic, or physical. This is not merely a social issue; it is also a major violation of human rights, exposing the victim to health and social consequences. The United Nations defines it as “intimate partner violence,” which occurs when one person in a relationship uses threat, mental abuse, manipulation, trying to hurt, injury, or financial abuse to take control of the other, and whose victim can be anyone, irrespective of age, gender, race, sexual orientation, class, or belief.

Domestic violence is not limited to those who are spouses or partners; it may also comprise multiple ties that an individual is bound by inside a family. In India, for instance, the legal component has given it a broader connotation, including sisters, widows, moms, single women, and any woman residing in the same family. As a result, domestic violence covers both intimate partners and family members. According to Section 3 of the Protection of Women from Domestic Violence Act of 2005 (DV Act), any act or omission by the Respondent that damages, injures, threatens, or abuses physically, sexually, verbally, or economically constitutes domestic violence.

According to the Union Health Ministry’s National Family Health Survey (NFHS-4), every third woman in India encounters some sort of domestic abuse from the age of fifteen. It also said that 31% of married women have experienced physical, sexual, or emotional torture at the hands of their partners. The main concern is that only around 10% of these women reported violence. Clearly, this is a big issue that must be addressed, and women must understand their rights as well as how to defend them. To address such incidents, the Protection of Women from Domestic Violence Act of 2005 was enacted.

Types of domestic violence

We have previously discussed the four categories of violence covered by the Act. However, in Bhartiben Bipinbhai Tamboli v. State of Gujarat 2018, these categories were further clarified. It was believed that:

Sexual violence

Sexual violence is a type of physical force that involves any act in which a woman is compelled to engage in any undesired, dangerous, or demeaning sexual behavior. It includes calling her names, harming her by using objects and weapons during sex, and even forcing her to have sex by a spouse or intimate partner with whom she has consensual sex.

Physical violence

Physical violence is the use of physical force against a woman so that she sustains bodily harm or injury. Physical assault, criminal intimidation (threaten to cause harm), and criminal force (use force against a person to injure him/her) in the form of beating, stomping, punching, abandoning the aggrieved party in a dangerous place, using weapons to intimidate her, pressuring her to leave her matrimonial home, injuring her children, using physical force in sexual situations, and so on.

Emotional violence

Not all abusive relationships are violent and result in physical harm. Many women are subjected to emotional abuse, which is as damaging as physical violence. It involves loud names calling, accusing, isolating, scaring, displaying domineering behaviour, insulting or constantly criticising her.

Economic violence

Economic violence is defined as, a woman not being supplied with enough money by her spouse to support herself and her children by purchasing clothes, food, medications, and so on. It also involves prohibiting women from working. Apart from that, forcibly evicting her from her home by not paying her rent, denying her of financial resources to which she is entitled under any custom or law, and limiting her access to shared domestic resources also come under this category. It also involves selling or alienating her movable or immovable assets, jewellery, shares, stocks, and other items in which she has a stake.

Laws that deal with domestic violence cases

In India, there are various laws that specifically address the safety of married women from their partners and their partners’ families.

Protection of Women Against Domestic Violence Act, 2005

This is a law passed by the Indian Parliament to safeguard women from domestic violence. It outlaws a wide spectrum of bodily, sexual, emotional, and financial abuse against women, all of which are explicitly defined by the Act. It protects women from men of the family. The Act’s scope includes not just the protection of women who are married to men, but also women who are in live-in relationships, as well as family members such as grandparents, mothers, and so on.

The Dowry Prohibition Act, 1961

This is a criminal code that punishes the gift and receiving of dowry. The Dowry Prohibition Act of 1961 outlaws the practice of dowry. If a person provides, accepts, or even asks for dowry, they can be imprisoned for a half year (i.e. for 6 months) or fined up to 5,000 rupees.

Section 498A IPC

This is a criminal law that applies to spouses or husband’s relatives who are cruel to women. Harassment for Dowry by relatives of the husband or by the husband is a crime under Section 498A of the Indian Penal Code 1860 (IPC). Harassment may take many forms, both physical and mental. Although Marital Rape is not a criminal offence in India, coerced sex with one’s wife might be deemed as ‘cruelty’ under this Section. Section 498A covers a wide range of topics. It also encompasses any and all purposeful behaviour against a woman that forces her to commit suicide or places her life, limb, or overall health in danger. In this context, health refers to both the physical and mental health of women.

How domestic violence laws are misused

Domestic violence laws are frequently used to harass the spouse or any other family member claiming under him, ensuring that he caves to the unlawful demands of the so-called victim rather than vice versa. Unfortunately, there have been a number of examples where Section 498A has been utilised primarily as a tool for blackmailing. It is often abused as a weapon for exacting retribution on whole families because under this clause, police can arrest anybody named as a tormentor in a married woman’s complaint, as ‘cruelty’ in marriages has been declared a non-bailable offence. Following that, bail under such circumstances is refused as a basic right.

As a result, many times, elderly parents and other relatives are wrongly accused of physically and emotionally tormenting the so-called victim, producing unnecessary tension that may result in bad health for the elderly parents and physical and mental pain for the accused’s family members.

Even if the charge is proven false, the accused is humiliated by the society. Poor and uneducated women may have endured the torment of their husband’s family, but many educated women now use this conduct for illegal motives.

The legislation was rewritten, significantly weighted in favour of women, on the assumption that only really offended women would come forward to file a complaint and that they would always speak the truth.

Landmark domestic violence cases in India

Lalita toppo v. the state of jharkhand, (2018), facts of the case.

In the case of Lalita Toppo v. the State of Jharkhand and Anr . (2018), which was heard by the Supreme Court of India, the Complainant, who was not the Respondent’s legally wedded wife, approached the Court to obtain maintenance under the provisions of the Protection of Women from Domestic Violence Act, 2005, supposing that she will not be allowed to maintenance under Section 125 of the Code of Criminal Procedure, 1973 .

In this instance, the Appellant was in a live-in relationship, with whom she had a kid. When the couple got separated, the Appellant sought support from her spouse, for which the Gumla Family Court allowed, giving her Rs 2000 per month and Rs 1000 to her child. The Appellant filed an appeal in the High Court, which found the family court’s ruling to be incorrect and ruled in favour of the partner. The Appellant then went to the Supreme Court.

Issue involved in the case

Whether a live-in partner can seek maintenance under the Domestic Violence Act, 2005?

Judgement given by the Court

In the Supreme Court a three-judge Bench composed of the then- CJI Ranjan Gogoi, Justices U.U. Lalit and K.M. Joseph observed that a live-in partner will be obligated to even more relief than that envisaged by Section 125 of the Code of Criminal Procedure, 1973. Making reference to the provisions of the Domestic Violence Act, the bench noted that the petitioner in the case would have a remedy to seek maintenance under the Act despite the fact that she is not the legally wedded wife and thus not obligated to be maintained under Section 125 of the Code of Criminal Procedure.

It was also observed by the Court that domestic violence, according to the provisions of the Domestic Violence Act, also includes economic abuse.

Inder Raj Malik v. Sunita Malik, (1986)

In this case , Sunita Malik(Complainant) and her husband, Inder Raj Mailk(Respondent), were married. To extract more and more money and articles, the Complainant Sunita was treated cruelly, beaten, starved, and abused by her husband and in-laws after marriage, particularly during festivals.

One day, she was tortured physically and mentally to the point of fainting in her matrimonial home, but no doctor was called for her medical checkup.

Sunita Malik was threatened by her mother and brother-in-law with death and kidnapping unless she compelled her parents to sell their property in Hauz Qazi. As a result, it was discovered that the Complainant, Sunita Mailk, was treated cruelly and physically tortured by her husband and in-laws. Sunita Malik was harassed in order to force her or anyone associated with her to meet an illegal requirement for movable and immovable property.

Issues involved in the case

Are Section 498A of the Indian Penal Code, 1908, and Section 4 of the Dowry Prohibition Act, 1961, subject to the Double Jeopardy provision of Article 20(2) of the Indian Constitution ?
Is Section 498A of the Indian Penal Code, 1908, ultra vires?

In this particular instance, the Delhi High Court had to decide whether a person could be convicted under both Section 4 of the Dowry Prohibition Act and Section 498A of the Indian Penal Code. The Court held that an individual can be convicted under both Section 4 of the Dowry Prohibition Act, 1956 and Section 498A of the IPC without facing double jeopardy. The Court held that Section 498A, IPC, and Section 4 of the Dowry Prohibition Act are distinct, since, under Section 4 of the Dowry Prohibition Act, mere demand of dowry is subject to punishment, whereas, in Section 498A, an act of cruelty committed against a newly wedded woman is punishable. As a result, it is possible to conclude that a person is subject to prosecution under both Section 4 of the Dowry Prohibition Act and Section 498A of the Indian Penal Code.

Hiralal P. Harsora and Ors v. Kusum Narottamdas Harsora and Ors, (2016)

In this case , The plaintiffs were Pushpa Narottam Harsora and Kusum Narottam Harsora, a mother-daughter duo. They filed a complaint against Pradeep (son/brother), his wife, and her two sisters, alleging that the four of them subjected them to domestic abuse. The Respondents urged the Metropolitan Magistrate to release Pradeep’s wife and two sisters/daughters since, according to Section 2(q), a complaint may only be filed against an “adult male.” The Respondents’ application was denied.

The Bombay High Court ruled that Section 2(q) of the aforementioned Act should be read in light of the definitions contained in Sections 2(a), 2(f), and 2(s) of the Protection of Women from Domestic Violence Act. Essentially, this assured that a complaint could be lodged against female family members as well as the “adult male member.” However, a complaint alleging domestic abuse cannot be brought primarily against the female members of the household. A co-Respondent must be an adult male. As a result, the Court did not read down the term “adult male person.” After this the mother and daughter duo filed a writ petition in the Supreme Court.

Whether females can be liable under the Domestic Violence Act, 2005?

The Supreme Court struck down adult male from the concept of ‘Respondent,’ holding that it is not founded on any intelligible differentia having a rational nexus with the purpose sought to be attained. In the same instance, the Supreme Court clarified that women and non-adults are among the people who can seek redress under the DV Act. The word “Respondent” in Section 2(q) or those who can be considered perpetrators of violence against women/against whom remedies under the DV Act are enforceable cannot be limited to the phrase “adult male person” in Section 2(q). As a result, remedies under the DV Act are accessible even against female members and non-adults.

Sandhya Wankhede v. Manoj Bhimrao Wankhede, (2011)

In the case of ( Sandhya Wankhede v. Manoj Bhimrao Wankhede ), after getting married in 2005, the Appellant Sandhya lived with R1, R2, and R3 for nearly a year, which caused problems in her marriage. She filed a police report against her husband under Section 498A of the Indian Penal Code for assaulting her. She also filed an application against all three Respondents, which the First Class Judicial Magistrate granted, directing R1 to pay the monthly maintenance. All Respondents were also barred from trying to evict the Complainant from her matrimonial home. Criminal appeals and applications filed by R1 before the Sessions Judge and the High Court were denied. R2 and R3 applied to the First Class Magistrate, but their request was denied. They filed an appeal, claiming that women cannot be considered Respondents in DV proceedings. The Court agreed and overturned the order, enabling Appellant to be evicted from her marriage home, which was solely owned by R2. As a result, it was not a “shared house.” However, the Court compelled R1 to offer separate lodging or make further payment for it as an alternative. The Appellant’s appeal in Sessions Court was replied based on the decision that “females” are not included within ‘Respondents.

The HC similarly took a similar stance, deleting R2 and R3’s names from the proceedings and ordering the Appellant to quit the matrimonial home. Hence this appeal was made.

Whether a complaint can be filed under the Domestic Violence Act only against an adult male person and not against the husband’s female relatives, i.e. mother-in-law and sister-in-law?

However, in the aforementioned instance, the Supreme Court resolved the question by ruling that the provision to Section 2(q) that doesn’t exclude female relatives of the husband or male partner from the scope of a complaint that can be submitted under the Domestic Violence Act. As a result, complaints can be filed not only against the adult male person, but also against the adult male’s female relative.

V.D. Bhanot v. Savita Bhanot, (2012)

The parties in this case got married on 23rd August 1980 and on 4th July 2005 the Respondent(wife) was driven out of her matrimonial home.
Thereafter Respondent filed a petition to the Magistrate under Section 12 of the DV Act.
The Magistrate granted interim relief of Rs 6000 to the wife and subsequently passed a protection/residence order under Section 18 and 19 of the DV Act protecting the right of The Respondent wife to reside in her matrimonial home in Mathura.
Meanwhile, the husband, who served in the armed forces, retired and filed an application to remove his wife from the government housing.
Taking this into account, the Magistrate directed the petitioner to enable his wife to reside on the first floor of her marital house or, if that is not practicable, to find alternative lodging close to her matrimonial home or to pay Rs 10,000 in rental costs.
She preferred an appeal since she was dissatisfied with the Magistrate’s decision.
The appeal was denied, and the Additional Sessions court reasoned that “because the applicant left the married house on 4.7.2005 and the Act came into effect on 26.10.2006, the claim of a woman living in a domestic relationship or residing together prior to 26.10.2006 was not maintainable.”
The HC investigated this legal issue in response to an appeal. and it directed that the action be maintained even though it was taken prior to the Act’s coming into effect.
Whether The Domestic Violence Act, 2005 also includes the victims of domestic violence prior to 2005?

The Supreme Court agreed with the reasoning given by the HC and held that:

“In our view, the Delhi High Court has also rightly held that even if a wife, who had shared a household in the past, but was no longer doing so when the Act came into force, would still be entitled to the protection of the Domestic Violence Act, 2005.”

Given the Respondent’s old age, the Court ordered the petitioner to furnish her with an appropriate portion of his house as well as 10,000 rupees per month for her maintenance. The Act’s goal was to safeguard women from domestic violence, hence it should be read in favour of women who are victims of domestic abuse. The Legislature’s intention was to cover women who’ve been victims of domestic abuse prior to the Act’s enactment. This was obvious from the Act’s definitions of the phrases “aggrieved individuals” and “domestic relationship.” The Domestic Violence Act,2005 is a civil remedy, and the criminal penalties given in the Act cannot be committed prior to the Act’s entry into effect, hence enforcing the Act retroactively does not violate Article 20(1) of the Indian Constitution.

Rajesh Kumar and others v. the State of U.P, 2017

In this case , Rajesh Sharma (Appellant) and Sneha Sharma (Respondent) married on November 28th, 2012. Sneha’s father gave the dowry to the best of his ability, but the Appellants were not pleased. They began harassing or beating the Complainant and demanded Rs. 3,00,000/- in dowry and a vehicle. Since the Complainant’s pregnancy had been aborted, the Appellant had left her at her house. On that occasion, the Appellant was called under Sections 498A and 323 of the IPC. The wife filed a lawsuit against the Appellant and his family. She claimed that her husband demanded dowry when she was pregnant and that she was tormented by her spouse and his family members, resulting in the termination of her pregnancy.

The Appellants petitioned the High Court to have the summons cancelled, but the Court denied their request. As a result, the Appellants filed an appeal in the Supreme Court against the High Court’s decision.

The Appellants, on the other hand, had no intention of making dowry demands.

Is there a necessity to curb the tendency to involve all members of the family in resolving a marriage dispute?
Is Section 498A of the IPC being abused or not?

In this case, it was determined that in order to protect the innocent person, i.e., the husband as well as their relatives, the Court directed the formation of a “Family Welfare Committee” to deal with Section 498A of the IPC, and that no one would be arrested until the committee provided justice to the Complainant. “The committee’s primary goal is to separate genuine cases from fraudulent ones.” To provide assistance to victims of false complaints. The accused who wasn’t in the jurisdiction cannot be excused from making personal appearances in court and must attend through video conference.”

The Supreme Court has recognised that Section 498A of the IPC is being severely misapplied. In the current instance, the Supreme Court directed the prosecution of the dowry-related offences and ordered that the harassment or persecution of the husband and married man be halted. Furthermore, the goal of this committee is to provide for the restoration of innocent people’s human rights.

“The spouse and his family members may have different points of view in the conflict, and arrest and court remand are not the solution.” The ultimate goal of every judicial system is to punish the wicked while protecting the innocent.”

Arnesh Kumar v. the State of Bihar & Anr, 2014

In this case , Arnesh Kumar (Appellant) and Sweta Kiran (Respondent) were married on July 1, 2007. Sweta Kiran claimed in Court that her mother-in-law and father-in-law sought Rs. 8 lakhs, a Maruti car, an air conditioner, a television set, and other items, and that when this was brought to Arnesh Kumar’s attention, he backed his mother and threatened to marry another woman. She further claimed that she was evicted from her matrimonial house since the dowry demand was not met. Arnesh Kumar refuted the charges and filed an anticipatory bail plea, which was initially dismissed by the learned Sessions Judge and then by the High Court. As a result, Arnesh Kumar has filed a Special Leave Petition with the Supreme Court.

1. Is it required for a police officer to arrest someone in response to a complaint if that person is suspected of committing a cognizable offence?

2. What remedies are available to a person if a woman uses section 498A of the IPC to her advantage?

3. Should the Appellant be granted anticipatory bail?

The Supreme Court granted the Appellant interim release under specific restrictions. The Apex Court said that “ Section 498A is a cognizable and non-bailable offence and has lent it a dubious place of pride amongst the provisions that are used as weapons rather than shield by disgruntled wives. The simplest way to harass is to get the husband and his relatives arrested under this provision. ” According to the “ Crime in India 2012 Statistics, ” 1,97,762 people were arrested in India in 2012 for violating Section 498A of the IPC. The charge-sheeting rate in instances under Section 498 A of the IPC is as high as 93.6%, but the conviction rate is barely 15%. This data clearly demonstrates how this part has been abused. The most straightforward approach to harassment is to have the spouse and his family imprisoned under this clause.” To discourage unwarranted arrests of accused, the Apex Court issued some required directives for Police to follow before detaining a person.

Bibi Parwana Khatoon v. State of Bihar, (2017)

In this case , a woman was killed by setting her on fire by her husband and her family, according to the circumstances of this case. A case was filed against the husband and his family in which the district court and the High Court ruled against them. After which, the victim’s sister-in-law and brother-in-law appealed the conviction to the Supreme Court.

Whether the Appellants had a common intention as the offender?

After hearing the case and reviewing the evidence, the bench concluded that both the lower courts erred in law in determining that the charge under Section 304B read with Section 34 of the Indian Penal Code, 1860 held against the current Appellants.

Based on the information presented, it cannot be proven beyond a reasonable doubt that the current Appellants, the deceased’s sister-in-law and brother-in-law, abused the victim in exchange for any such dowry demand.

Neither can it be proven, based on circumstantial evidence, that the Appellants had any common intention with the deceased’s spouse in the commission of the crime.

Furthermore, it is abundantly obvious from the documented evidence that they formerly resided in a separate village.

Kamlesh Devi v. Jaipal and Ors., (2019)

In this case , the petitioner Kamlesh Devi stated that she and the Respondents are family members of the same family and they’ve been residing in the same premises for a long time. The petitioner’s husband is a former BSF officer, and she has three kids, Urmila, Anusaya, and Gaytri. Anusaya and Gaytri are the petitioner’s unmarried daughters who attend Krishna Nagar College for their education. Furthermore, Respondents have formed a gang and are quarrelsome individuals, and whenever the Petitioner’s daughters, Anusaya and Gaytri, went to their college, Respondents Jaipal, Krishan Kumar, and Sandeep followed them and taunted them, as well as engaged them in obscene behaviour.

Sube Singh, the petitioner’s husband, also filed a complaint with the Sarpanch of Village Gaud against the Respondents, after which the Respondents apologised in writing on 5.8.2008 in the presence of respected members of the village. They then returned to normalcy for a short period of time before resuming their obscene behaviour. As a result, having exhausted all other options for protection from domestic abuse, the complaint was filed.

After examining the provisions of the Act, the Trial Court determined that none of the witnesses on record demonstrated any fact to the effect that the Respondents and the petitioner were living in a shared home and that the Respondents had committed domestic violence against them.

The trial court also ruled that no violence of any sort was claimed within the joint household’s grounds. The case was dismissed by the Ld. Magistrate. An appeal filed with the High Court was likewise rejected.

Whether the Respondents are liable for domestic violence?

Judgement given by the court

The Supreme court said that the High Court correctly concluded that the elements of domestic violence were completely missing in this case. The petitioner and Respondents are not residing in the same residence together. The responders are allegedly family members, according to a vague accusation. There isn’t even a murmur between the Respondents and the petitioner. They seem to be neighbours. Hence, the special leave petition was denied

Ajay Kumar v. Lata @ Sharuti, (2019)

In this case, the Appellant Lata is the Respondent’s brother-in-law, i.e. his brother’s widow, and they used to live together in a Hindu Joint Family Property. According to the lawsuit filed in the Supreme Court, there seem to be no rules in the Act that requires the Appellant to pay maintenance to the Brother’s wife. Only if they were in a business partnership would he be obligated to pay the maintenance.

Section 12(1) of the DV Act states that a person may approach a magistrate for relief or financial relief to compensate for loss sustained by her or her child as a result of domestic violence, however, this does not include the order of maintenance under Section 125 of the Code of Criminal Procedure or any other law. The lady said that after her husband died, she was not permitted to dwell in her matrimonial house and was driven out with her kid, and she now has no means of support for herself and her child.

Whether brother-in-law comes under the definition of “Respondent” under Section 2(q) of the DV Act?

In this case , the Supreme Court ruled that under the Domestic Violence Act, 2005, maintenance to a widow can also be provided by a brother-in-law. The Supreme Court rejected the Appellant’s allegation that Section 2(q) of the Protection Women from DV Act defines “Respondent” as any adult male individual who is or has been in a domestic relationship with a partner against whom the remedy is sought. The Supreme Court drafted a domestic connection between the woman and her brother-in-law, stating that the brother-in-law and the woman are a joint family.

The Domestic Violence Act, 2005 and the provisions of the Indian Penal Code, 1860 are a highly promising piece of legislation that combines civil and criminal punishments to give effective remedies to women who become victims of domestic violence. The statute includes provisions for protection officers, medical facilities, and free of charge orders, among other things, to assist aggrieved women in defending themselves and their loved ones. However, the Act does not come without flaws. Clearly, the Act’s implementation has to be strengthened. According to Human Rights Watch, police frequently do not submit a First Information Report (FIR), which is the first step in commencing a police investigation, especially if the aggrieved individual is from a low-income or socially disadvantaged part. It is also true that the DV Act has failed to address the issues that women and men confront when it comes to domestic violence, and the law is frequently misapplied when it is employed. Society needs more gender-neutral laws that treat men and women equally in situations of domestic violence, rather than instilling dread in the hearts of innocent people, as most men do and giving the other gender an extortion weapon. On the surface, the DV Act appears to be gender prejudiced. The DV Act should be changed with more gender-neutral clauses to prevent its misuse and to promote gender equality and fair justice.

https://blog.ipleaders.in/protection-of-women-from-domestic-violence-act/
https://blog.ipleaders.in/analysis-of-provisions-related-to-cruelty-in-marriage/
https://lexspeak.in/2013/06/misuse-of-domestic-violence-act/
https://www.amicusx.com/post/_498a

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Confronting dowry-related violence in India: Women at the center of justice

Date: Monday, 24 December 2012

When Shehnaz Bano married Naved in 2009, she never suspected her life as a married woman would soon spiral into a circle of violence.

Naved's parents were always opposed to his relationship with Shehnaz as they deemed the initial dowry offered by her family as unsatisfactory. To appease the in-laws, Shehnaz's parents gave a significant dowry during the wedding and even afterwards, giving in to the pressure of the in-laws.

When Shehnaz's parents were no longer able to fulfill their demands, the abuse began: she was forced to do all the household work and cater to the demands of each of the eight members who resided there.

She was required to dust and sweep the house, wash clothes and cook food for the family. She was given very little food and had no money for personal needs. Her in-laws and her husband Naved treated her like a slave. She started falling ill frequently due to the stress and the workload, but since she had no money, she was forced to ask her parents or her brother to take her to the hospital. Moreover, every time she went to the hospital, her in-laws would lock the house, thus denying her entrance. She would knock for hours and eventually, the neighbours, and often, the police, would intervene and only then would the in-laws allow her back in.

Despite the mistreatment she had to endure, lack of financial independence and the stigma associated with divorce in many parts of India forced her to stay with her husband.

Dowry-related violence is widespread in India. In 2011 alone, the National Crime Records Bureau reported 8,618 dowry harassment deaths. Unofficial figures show that these numbers are at least three times as high. The 1983 Criminal Law Act made “cruelty to the wife by the husband or his relatives an offense, but it focused on punishing the perpetrator, while failing to recognize and fulfil women's needs for immediate and emergency relief.

This changed with the passage of the Protection of Women from Domestic Violence Act (PWDVA) in 2005, following a decade of sustained advocacy and activism by the women's movement in India. Drafted by the Lawyers Collective Women's Rights Initiative through a consultative process and with support from the UN Trust Fund to End Violence against Women , the law built on the real experiences of women. By centering on the need to protect women and to enable them to negotiate a life free of violence, the law broke the myth that for victims, justice is limited to tougher penalties.

“The PWDVA marks a radical change bringing violence within the private sphere to the forefront, and recognizing domestic violence as a violation of the human rights of women, says Indira Jaising, Executive Director of Lawyers Collective Women's Rights Initiative. “The passing of the domestic violence law has reinforced the norm that violence against women is unacceptable and, more importantly, this norm has been backed by State sanctions.

For Shehnaz, the law became the channel to escape violence. When one day her sister-in-law attacked her with a knife, and she was then left with no financial or other support from her husband, she decided to file a case. The Lawyers Collective, which introduced Shehnaz to the law, accompanied her as she succeeded in securing financial support under the PWDVA Act—rebuilding her life independent of her husband and in-laws.

“Many are the lessons I have drawn, she says. “I have learnt to not have any fear and to go out and stand on my own feet, to be brave.

Today, Shehnaz is enrolled in Delhi University, pursuing a diploma in computer science. She has become an active member of the Delhi Domestic Violence Survivors Group established by Lawyers Collective. The group provides legal support to women engaged in litigation and in the process of receiving relief, and engages pro-bono lawyers to work as mediators between the Court and the women. As Shehnaz explains it, the group is also a space of inspiration and mutual support:

“I encourage women to speak out and seek support from organizations such as Lawyers Collective, to attend survivor meetings and to build up their confidence and regain their pride.

Meanwhile, work continues for Lawyers Collective. With a new grant from the UN Trust Fund, the organization has been monitoring the implementation of the Law through its annual reports, “ Staying Alive . A national picture of the effectiveness of the Law, the reports carry the voices and the stories of thousands of survivors like Shehnaz.

In January 2013, the 6th “Staying Alive report will be launched at a national conference that will be attended by India's Minister for Women & Child Development. In December, a documentary highlighting the monitoring work of the Lawyers collective was released.

Prevalence of intimate partner violence among Indian women and their determinants: a cross-sectional study from national family health survey – 5

Sayantani Manna ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0001-9093-1172 1 na1 ,
Damini Singh ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0002-3574-4398 1 na1 ,
Manish Barik ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0001-7582-1047 1 ,
Tanveer Rehman ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0003-2377-4394 1 ,
Shishirendu Ghosal ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0003-1833-3703 1 ,
Srikanta Kanungo ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0001-5647-0122 1 &
Sanghamitra Pati ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0002-7717-5592 1

BMC Women's Health volume 24 , Article number: 363 ( 2024 ) Cite this article

Metrics details

Introduction

Intimate partner violence (IPV) can be described as a violation of human rights that results from gender inequality. It has arisen as a contemporary issue in societies from both developing and industrialized countries and an impediment to long-term development. This study evaluates the prevalence of IPV and its variants among the empowerment status of women and identify the associated sociodemographic parameters, linked to IPV.

This study is based on data from the National Family Health Survey (NFHS) of India, 2019-21 a nationwide survey that provides scientific data on health and family welfare. Prevalence of IPV were estimated among variouss social and demographic strata. Pearson chi-square test was used to estimate the strength of association between each possible covariate and IPV. Significantly associated covariates (from univariate logistic regression) were further analyzed through separate bivariate logistic models for each of the components of IPV, viz-a-viz sexual, emotional, physical and severe violence of the partners.

The prevalence of IPV among empowered women was found to be 26.21%. Among those who had experienced IPV, two-thirds (60%) were faced the physical violence. When compared to highly empowered women, less empowered women were 74% more likely to face emotional abuse. Alcohol consumption by a partner was established to be attributing immensely for any kind of violence, including sexual violence [AOR: 3.28 (2.83–3.81)].

Conclusions

Our research found that less empowered women experience all forms of IPV compared to more empowered women. More efforts should to taken by government and other stakeholders to promote women empowerment by improving education, autonomy and decision-making ability.

Peer Review reports

Domestic violence is one of the emerging problems in recent years in both low- and middle-income as well as high-income countries. Gender-based violence, another leading public health problem identified in 1996, is a matter of human rights rooted in gender inequality [ 1 ]. The Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) from 2015, also recognized the importance of gender-based violence, which is an advance step to eliminate gender inequality and women empowerment [ 2 , 3 ]. Intimate partner violence (IPV) is recognized as the most common gender-based violence, which is mostly used as synonymously as domestic or spousal violence but conceptually a subtle difference is present [ 4 ]. IPV affect general health and reproductive health of women, causing chronic pain, injuries, fractures, disabilities, unwanted pregnancy and over expose to contraceptive pills, increasing vulnerability to sexually transmitted diseases [ 5 ]. Such physical and mental strains gradually bring about in the form of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), anxiety, phobia, depression, alcohol abuse etc [ 6 ].

IPV has become a global public health problem with the consequences of premature deaths and injuries [ 7 ]. World Health Organization (WHO) has recognized IPV as a “global hidden epidemic” [ 8 , 9 ]. Worldwide, one-third of the women have experienced IPV [ 3 ]. Due to stigma and fear Intimate Partner violence (IPV) on married women remain unreported in India [ 10 ]. IPV has been recognized as a criminal offence under Indian Penal Code 498-A since 1983. Victims are offered civil protection under the Protection of Women from Domestic Violence Act (PWDVA) 2005, which covers all forms of physical, mental, verbal, sexual and economic violence (unlawful dowry demands), including marital rape and harassment etc [ 11 , 12 , 13 ]. According to the National Crime Record Bureau’s report, the rate of total crime per lakh ( per lakh defined in the Indian numbering system as equal to one hundred thousand) in the women population is 56.5 [ 14 ].

Evidence suggests IPV is associated with low socioeconomic status and unemployment. Indian-employed women faced IPV at a lower rate [ 15 ], while other researchers have identified it as an increased risk of violence [ 16 ]. Other studies illustrated little consistency between women empowerment and violence across varying cultures, where educational attainment, income, decision-making, and contextual factors all play vital roles individually [ 17 , 18 , 19 ]. On the contrary empowered women and following economic independence act as a shield to domestic violence in high-income countries [ 20 ]. Consequently, women’s empowerment would continue to be perceived as a “zero-sum” game with politically robust beneficiaries and weak losers if it was advocated as a goal in and off itself [ 22 ]. There may be present specific association and management techniques for each sort of IPV which must thus be researched independently [ 15 ]. Hence, in this study, we estimated the prevalence of different IPV categories against empowerment status of women and determined the sociodemographic behaviour associated with IPV.

Overview of data

India is home for more than 1.4 billion population, making this country the second-most populous country in the world [ 23 ]. The National Family Health Survey-5 (NFHS-5), which was conducted in all 28 states and 8 union territories of the country, is representative at the national and state/UT levels, adopted in each survey round. A two-stage sampling was done to choose villages and census enumeration blocks from districts in rural and urban regions, respectively. From June 2019 to April 2021, data were collected using CAPI. (Computer-Assisted Personal Interview) with an internal scheduling and adequate maintenance of respondent anonymity. The NFHS-5 methodology has been extensively explained and published elsewhere, including the methods for choosing households and data collection [ 24 ].

Study population and study design

The design for this research is comparable to a cross-sectional study because the secondary data used here is collected during the two phases of NFHS-5: from June 17, 2019, to January 30, 2020, and from January 2, 2020, to April 30, 2021. Women who lived with their spouses or partners and experienced any event of domestic abuse, ever till the day of the interview, were included. The included observations were then the subject of secondary data analysis.

Sample size

Among the 724,115 women interviewed during the NFHS-5, information was acquired from “never-married” or “ever-married” women aged 18–49 years on their experience of violence committed by their present and previous spouses. Only participants who lived with a partner (married or unmarried) were included in this study ( Fig. 1 ) . As a result, 68,949 women formed the ultimate sample size.

Flow diagram of sample selection from the women’s questionnaire of the NFHS-5

Independent variables

The current study focused on the sociodemographic covariates like age, residence (rural/urban), caste, respondent educational qualification, partner’s educational qualification, religion (four categories: Hindu, Muslim, Christian and other religions), wealth index (five quintiles: poorest, poorer, middle, richer and richest quintile), and women empowerment (three categories: low, medium and high ). Another two sets of covariates were the partner’s habit of alcohol consumption and partner controlling behaviour, both dichotomous, grouped as ‘yes’ or ‘no’.

Levels of women’s empowerment were assessed using three indicators: (1) women’s decision-making ability for the household (including access to healthcare, household purchasing and freedom to visit relatives, spending husband earnings, beating wife refuse to have sex), (2) beating indicators(beating the child, wife when argues or refuse to have sex etc.) (3)controlling indicators (includes if allowed to go to market, health facility, outside the village, is justified if went outside without telling), and (4) five economic indicators explaining ownership of the land, house, working status, having a bank account and if owns a mobile phone. All the selected variables are coded into binary variables 0 and 1. Binary variables were included in the composite index to guarantee consistency, while ordinal variables were recoded into binary variables. Table A1 in the supplementary file describes the final variables and their recorded values.

During principal component analysis (PCA), scree plots were examined to determine the number of components to be retained. The scree plot shows that only five components’ eigenvalue is more than 1, which were further processed [ 4 , 19 , 25 ]. The Kaiser-Meyer-Olkin (KMO) measure of sampling adequacy (greater than 0.04 in the PCA) analysis indicates that the sample sizes in this study were appropriate for PCA (Table A2 in the supplementary file). For all components, Bartlett’s test of sphericity confirms that the selected markers of women’s empowerment were intercorrelated. Furthermore, the reliability coefficient (Cronbach’s alpha score:0.60–0.79) demonstrates an adequate component correlation level. We utilized the first component only after loadings and computing component scores, and the index scores were then divided into quintiles (low, medium, and high). Finally, for each selected nation, an overall index of women’s empowerment was built with three ordered categories: low, medium, and high, where ‘low’ indicated women had lower employment and ‘high’ meant women had more empowerment.

Outcome characteristics: intimate partner violence status

In NFHS-5, a series of questions were asked to collect information on violence committed by the partners, including husbands. It also examines four types of violence faced by women: physical, sexual, emotional, and severe. The level of violence was determined by asking all “ever-married” women if their husbands had ever done the following to them:

Physical violence

The IPVs which include any physical violence inflicted on a woman by her husband/partner, which provides for: (a) ever slapped; (b) arm twisted /hair pulled; (c) pushed, shaken/had something thrown at them; (d) punched with a fist or hit by something harmful; (e) kicked/dragged; (f) strangled /brunt; (g) threatened with any weapon.

Sexual violence

The Sexual IPVs were captured by three questions in the dataset: (a) physically forced to have sexual intercourse; (b) physically forced to perform any other sexual acts (c) forced you with threats / in any other way to perform sexual acts.

Emotional violence

Emotional violence recorded by these questions (a) ever having been said /done something to humiliate you in front of others, b) threatened to hurt /harm you or someone close to you, c) insulted you/make you feel bad about yourself.

Severe violence

Severe violence includes physical acts like beatings, choking, burning, and using weapons, as well as sexual violence [ 5 , 26 ]. NFHS-5 asks specific questions to gather this information are a) ever bruises, b) eye injuries, sprains, dislocations or burns, c) severe burns, d) wounds, broken bones, broken teeth or others.

The answer was classified as “never” if the response was “frequently”, “occasionally”, or “yes but not in the previous 12 months”. Except for ‘never,’ all responses to questions on IPVs indicated prior exposure to physical, sexual, emotional, or serious violence. For simplicity, all responses except ‘never’ were coded as Yes = 1 but never as No = 0.

Statistical analysis

Data analysis was conducted in STATA v17.0 (Stata Corp., Texas). The Fig. 2 below presents a conceptual framework for predicting the socioeconomic determinants of IPV in India. Using this framework, IPV can be characterized as a function of the individual, household, and community variables (Fig. 2 ) . We also analyzed weighted profiles of various IPVs among the sociodemographic and expressed them in numbers and proportions. Distribution of the number of IPV among other categorical was presented as frequencies and association in p-value (< 0.002). To account for the complex survey design, we utilized the domestic violence weighting variable (d005) provided in the NFHS data and applied the survey command (svy), which enabled us to weight the data accurately.

For each independent variable, we performed univariate analysis (Table A3 ) and incorporated the variables with significant p-values to the multivariable logistic regression model. To assess the appropriateness of the model fit, we utilized two statistical tests: the AIC BIC test and the Hosmer-Lemeshow test. The diminishing values of AIC and BIC suggest that the model is well-suited for the analysis. Moreover, the Hosmer-Lemeshow test yielded a p-value of > 0.05, which reinforces our conclusion that the model is a suitable fit for this analysis. These preliminary models aimed to establish whether any factors should not be regarded as potential covariates for IPV in the multivariate analysis.

Conceptual framework for the determinants of intimate partner violence

Among the 68,949 women in the study, 26.21% (18,074) experienced intimate partner abuse. Most of them belonged to > 35 years of age (40%), and 46% of women completed secondary-level education [Table A3 (Supplementary file)]. Among 26.21% of women who faced any kind of violence, 60% (11,679) experienced physical violence, 23.87% (4,314) were physically injured due to severe IPV, 2.15% experienced sexual violence, and 9.54% experienced emotional violence (Fig. 3 ).

Distribution of various form of IPV among Indian women

Table 1 shows the sociodemographic profile, which is further classified by the type of violence experienced. A prevalence of 28.39%, among women aged > 35 years was observed for IPV from their partner. In rural areas have the higher incidence of physical IPV at 26%, compared to urban areas. Women belongs to SC caste had the experienced the highest prevalence of IPV. Women with no formal education (39.03%) and less empowered (37.81%) were the most vulnerable to violence. Similarly, 35% of women who didn’t have any formal education had experienced physical abuse by their partner. When the partner is highly educated, IPV was 19% compared to no formal education (41.60%). IPV was almost equally prevalent among Hinduism (27%) and Muslim women (25%) [physical violence (Hindu: 24.40%; Muslim: 21.31%); emotional violence (Hindu: 11.61%; Muslim: 10.94%)]. In the southern region of India, 30% of women have reported experiencing violence.

The distribution of sampled women based on their background characteristics has been presented in Table A4 . The chi-square test is used to assess the strength of association between each socioeconomic variable, and the p-values are provided in the last column of Table A4 . Multivariate regression (Table 2 ) showed a higher chance of experiencing severe IPV among the 25–35 years age-group than the 35–49 years age group with AOR 2.18 (95%CI: 1.69–2.80) in comparison with 15–24 years age group. Respondents who didn’t have any formal education had higher likelihood [AOR = 1.65 (95% CI = 1.35–2.02)] of facing physical violence than women having more than secondary education. Partners with no formal education were significantly associated with any form of violence compared to the highly educated partners. There was 52% greater likelihood among the less empowered women of facing more emotional violence than the highly empowered women. Less empowered women had a significant odd of experiencing sexual violence [AOR:1.92(1.59–2.31)] than that highly empowered women. Relatively higher odds of physical violence were evident from southern [AOR: 2.10 (1.82–2.42)] and eastern [AOR: 1.75(1.51–2.02)] regions, however, sexual violence was highly associated with western [AOR: 1.21 (0.92–1.59)] part of India. Partner’s alcohol drinking was found to be an attributing factor for any form of violence, i.e., emotional violence [AOR: 2.34 (2.09–2.63)], physical violence[AOR: 2.76 (2.52–3.03)] sexual violence [AOR: 3.31 (2.83–3.88)] or severe violence [AOR: 3.38 (2.94–3.89)]. Partner controlling behaviour also evolved as a determining factor for any violence, i.e., emotional violence [AOR:6.63(5.87–7.47)], Physical violence [AOR:3.62(3.33–3.94)] and sexual violence [AOR:6.60(5.53–7.88)].

Our analysis showed a statistically significant increase in physical violence, particularly among women who were less empowered. At the individual level, it has been shown that women are less likely to experience IPV when they are more educated, higher income status, and are empowered. Household-level factors demonstrated that they had significance in intimate partner violence as well as the community-level factors showed the same (i.e., husband’s education, controlling behaviour and drinking Alcohol).

The results of this study demonstrate that a few individual factors strongly explain IPV. For instance, young women who belong to a scheduled caste, being from lower income group and with less level educationwere more likely to experience spousal violence. Previous evidence supported that higher prevalence of IPV is observed among women from Schdule Tribe and Schdeduled Caste [ 27 , 28 ]. Being from lower socioeconomic status also found to be elevating the risk of IPV in women. The literature with the similar evidence confirm that the women from marginal poor segment of society [ 29 , 30 , 31 ] .

Significantly, the more alcohol is consumed, the more nuanced the association between the variables of women empowerment become. According to the findings of this study, women who indicate that their husbands frequently or occasionally consume alcohol have a higher likelihood of experiencing all types of IPV than empowered women who report their husbands never consume alcohol [ 33 , 34 ].

Working women with higher education, on the other hand, experienced higher IPV exposures as compared to their non-working counterparts. The ego considerations of the spouses and gender prejudices in Indian society are likely reasons for any kind of violence [ 35 , 36 , 37 ]. This public health challenge can be addressed by enhancing economic empowerment there by could providing women the awareness and a platform for protest. Given that different levels of social ecology influence spousal violence, interventions at a higher level may be more effective in challenging spousal violence social norms rather than focusing on individual factors, which are difficult to change at the population level and may take decades or generations to be effective.

Strength & limitation

This study used nationally representative data to understand the prevalence of intimate partner violence. It creates an aggregated index of women’s empowerment, providing a more comprehensive view of its relationship with IPV. The NFHS collects a large data set from a representative sample of the country and hence gives a good estimate of marital violence and its relationships with explanatory factors at the population level. However, one of the key drawbacks was its dependence on women’s self-reporting of partner violence. Spousal violence is delicate and intimate in nature, and it is difficult for women to divulge during major survey data collecting due to recall bias and fear of stigmatisation. Further, we were unable to validate the direction of causation and the causative mechanism of domestic and Intimate Partner violence in India using this cross-sectional data. In addition, our composite measure of women’s empowerment index was not strong by conventional statistical standards.

Finally, the implications of the findings are constrained because the data supplied only allowed for the examination of heterosexual relationships [ 39 ]. It should be emphasized, however, that monogamous heterosexual partnerships are the norm in India, signifying a larger reach in terms of generalizability.

Implication

This study has numerous significant policy consequences. This study provides recent evidence for understanding the underlying factors of IPV in India, where wife-beating is high, women’s decision-making power is limited, and male-dominated cultures prevail across the country, though to varying degrees from rigid gender norms. Women’s empowerment, which in turn could ease the risk of IPV and domestic violence, may be enhanced by economic interventions such as conditional cash transfers gender sensitization workshops, media, and cultural campaigns and microcredit programs [ 40 ].

The findings of this study highlight the need to enhance girls’ education, increasing women empowerment, equity in society by eliminating harmful socio-cultural practises. Nevertheless, sole reliance on economic empowerment falls short in ensuring the comprehensive protection of women. Interventions aimed at empowering women must engage with couples as units and operate at the community level, addressing issues of equal job opportunities and gender-specific roles to be effective.

Data availability

The dataset generated during and/or analyzed during the current study is available from the Demographic and Health Surveys (DHS) repository (with proper permission), Available at: https://www.dhsprogram.com/data/dataset/India_Standard-DHS_2020.cfm?flag=0 .

Abbreviations

National family health survey

Ministry of health and family welfare

Union territory

Intimate partner violence

Sustainable development goals

Principal component analysis

Adjusted odds ratio

Confidence interval

World health organization

Post-traumatic stress disorder

Demographic health survey

Computer-assisted personal interview

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Acknowledgements

We sincerely thank Demographic and Health Surveys (DHS) and the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare (MoHFW) for providing the NFHS-5 dataset.

No funding was received for this study.

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Sayantani Manna and Damini Singh contributed equally to this work.

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Division of Health Research, ICMR-Regional Medical Research Centre, Bhubaneswar, Odisha, India

Sayantani Manna, Damini Singh, Manish Barik, Tanveer Rehman, Shishirendu Ghosal, Srikanta Kanungo & Sanghamitra Pati

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TR, SK and SP conceived the study. TR and SK developed the analytical framework. SM, DS and MB performed the analysis, produced results and drafted manuscript. SK, TR and SG monitored the analysis. All Authors edited the manuscript. SP provided overall guidance and supervised the study.

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Correspondence to Srikanta Kanungo or Sanghamitra Pati .

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Manna, S., Singh, D., Barik, M. et al. Prevalence of intimate partner violence among Indian women and their determinants: a cross-sectional study from national family health survey – 5. BMC Women's Health 24 , 363 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1186/s12905-024-03204-x

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Domestic violence cases in India increased 53% between 2001 and 2018: Study

The data analysed by the researchers was extracted from the annual reports of the national crimes record bureau (ncrb) under four domestic violence crime headings..

A longitudinal research study by BMC Women’s Health analysing trends and lessons on domestic violence faced by Indian women from 2001 to 2018 has highlighted that India needs to focus on efforts to reduce the gaps in the administrative data which includes underreporting and almost stagnant data over the time.

Between 2001 and 2018, the majority of the domestic violence cases were filed under ‘cruelty by husband or his relatives’, with the reported rate of this crime increasing by 53% over 18 years.

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The study has also highlighted that the rate of cases of cruelty by husbands or relatives was 28.3 per 1,00,000 women in 2018, which is an increase of 53% from 2001. The rate of reported dowry deaths and abetment to suicide was 2% and 1.4%, respectively, in 2018. The data analysed by the researchers was extracted from the annual reports of the National Crimes Record Bureau (NCRB) under four domestic violence crime headings – cruelty by husband or his relatives, dowry deaths, abetment to suicide, and protection of women against domestic violence act.

A total of 1,548,548 cases were reported under cruelty by husband or his relatives in India from 2001 to 2018, with 554,481 (35.8%) between 2014 and 2018. The reported rate of this crime in India was 18.5 in 2001 and 28.3 in 2018 per 1,00,000 women aged 15–49 years, marking a significant increase of 53% over this period. Wide variations were seen in the rate for reported cruelty by husband or his relatives in 2018 at the state-level.

Delhi, Assam, West Bengal , Arunachal Pradesh, Meghalaya and Jammu and Kashmir documented more than 160% increase in this reported crime rate during 2001–2018.The greatest decline in the rate of this reported crime was seen in Mizoram, 74.3% from 2001 to 2018.

“However, it is important to note that only some states recorded changes in the reported rate with the almost stagnant reported rate of domestic violence in many states over time,” said Prof Rakhi Dandona, the lead researcher of the study and a professor at the Public Health Foundation of India.

The study also underlined that the non-availability of anonymised individual level data of the cases registered in the public domain limits the exploration of patterns in domestic violence that can enable evidence-based policy action. The Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) target 5 is to eliminate all forms of violence against women and girls and the two indicators of this progress are rates of intimate partner violence (IPV) and non-partner violence. The WHO has estimated a 26% prevalence of IPV in ever-married /partnered women aged 15 years, this prevalence is at 35% for southern Asia.

“Data and Information systems must be strengthened for better evidence- informed policy to address the issue of domestic violence in India. The lessons from nearly 20 years of surveillance of domestic violence in Indian women points out that the change in the reported rate of domestic violence cases is seen only in some states while some had an almost stagnant rate. This underlines the importance of understanding the under-reporting of cases by women and by police, thereby, increasing robustness of available data. More standardisation in data recording and increase in the range of data by the police will strengthen utility of this data more effectively to inform policy and prioritise prevention strategies to reduce the cases of domestic violence against women in India,” Dr Dandona said.

The poor response of a formal system to reduce domestic violence is also reflected in the legal recourse as only 6.8% of the cases filed completed trials in 2018, with the majority of accused being acquitted. “This bleak state of waiting, extended trials and low conviction is known to further discourage women from reporting cases,” Dr Dandona added.

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Latest NFHS-5 Data Shows 30% of Indian Women Face Domestic Violence…And That’s Just The Reported Number!

Violence in a marriage doesn’t always present itself overnight. There are many warning signs, and the women stuck in this feel fear.

A slap can change a woman’s life. All illusions of love, trust and safety are shattered with even one act of violence within a marriage. Repeated acts of violence in a relationship can be emotionally dislodging and mentally excruciating and can have a long lasting impact on a woman.

Domestic violence in Indian households remains a dirty little open secret and a pervasive problem, violating a woman’s basic human rights.

The United Nations defines gender- based violence as “any act of gender-based violence that results in, or is likely to result in, physical, sexual, or mental harm or suffering to women, including threats of such acts, coercion or arbitrary deprivation of liberty, whether occurring in public or in private life.”

Latest NFHS-5 (National Family Health Survey) data on domestic violence

According to the latest report by The National Family Health Survey (NFHS) a large scale, and multi round survey conducted in Indian households:

“29.3% married Indian women between the ages of 18-49 years have faced domestic violence/or sexual violence . 3.1% of pregnant women between the ages of 18-49 have experienced physical violence during any pregnancy.”

And that’s just the number of cases reported by women; there are always a large number of cases that never make it to the police.

Source: NFHS Survey 2019-2021

Never miss real stories from India's women.

The data reflects the sad reality that domestic violence remains a serious issue in India, even though we have strict laws in place for the protection of women. Internalised patriarchy, misogyny, violence, continue to affect the daily lives of Indian women.

According to the latest report domestic violence is highest in Karnataka 44% Bihar 40% Manipur 39% Telangana 36% Tamil Nadu 38%

Domestic violence was least in Lakshadweep 1.3% Goa 8.3% Himachal Pradesh 8.3%

All inferences discussed below are based on this NFHS-5 report.

Forms of violence in a marriage

Violence in a marriage doesn’t always present itself overnight. There are many warning signs before the actual act of violence takes place. The report found that fear of husband and spousal violence were closely correlated. Women who said that they were afraid of their husbands most of the time were found to be most likely to have ever experienced spousal violence.

Controlling behaviour such as being told what to wear, where to go, who to meet, monitoring whereabouts, and controlling finances, baseless accusations of being unfaithful, isolating and limiting contact with family, etc are all red flags and strong indicators that violence may take place in the future.

Violence within a relationship can occur in multiple forms be it physical, emotional and sexual.

As many as 77% women never sought any help from anyone about the violence inflicted on them.The most common source of support was the woman’s own family (58%) followed by the husband’s family (27%) and friends (18%) Among the institutional sources of help, the most common was the police (9%) followed by a religious leader (2%) and, doctors, lawyers (2%)

There are many reasons for underreporting of domestic violence and the proportion of women opting to stay in abusive marriages is not startling. The more one faces violence in a relationship, the more it becomes normalised and accepted psychologically.Many women are also blamed for their husband’s bad behaviour and the burden of “reforming” a violent man often falls on the woman.

Factors such as conservative societal norms, victim blaming, shaming, and fear of judgement all make a woman think twice before speaking up. Women also feel unsafe approaching the police because if their partners are jailed, they will be subjugated to more abuse once released, and that they would be harassed by their in-laws or others in the meanwhile.

Married women with children who are financially dependent on their abusive husbands find it the most difficult to leave. The labels of being a “divorcee” or “single mom” and its impact on their children stops many women from leaving abusive marriages. The lack of a strong support structure, fear of social judgement, and inability to provide for the child are all contributing causes. So, for the sake of the child, many women continue to stay in physically and emotionally abusive marriages.

Societal conditioning is another factor, women who are raised in conservative, traditional households are not encouraged to work. They are mostly trained from childhood to be dutiful daughters, sisters, and then wives, robbing them of any agency.

Long lasting scars

Even if a woman leaves an abusive marriage, the road to healing is a long one.

The physical scars of domestic violence may or may not heal but the psychological effects are long lasting. D epression, anxiety, low self esteem, post traumatic stress disorder (including nightmares, flashbacks, crippling anxiety) suicidal thoughts, alcohol and drug abuse, loss of trust, isolation… It can change one’s perspective on life and can become crippling.

All those survivors who seem to “be strong and cope” might actually be only suppressing the trauma and/ or dissociating from it.

Does better education, urban privilege decrease violence against women?

There is only a slight difference between domestic violence in rural and urban areas. In rural areas it is at 31.6% and urban areas which is slightly less at 24.2%.

Internalised patriarchy and misogyny are pervasive in all of Indian society and domestic violence remains an all India problem. A study conducted by Indian Journal of Community Medicine in Karnataka found that violence occurs even in the educated population, especially psychological abuse being the most common.

To walk out of an abusive marriage takes a lot of thought and courage. Women must be given social support and encouraged to not tolerate violence. A woman must be encouraged to lodge a complaint and be given institutional support when she does seek justice .

India needs a strong national effort to raise awareness about domestic violence, led by state governments and civil society. Citizens must be made aware of the heightened risks of domestic violence, and bystanders and neighbours should be encouraged to interfere if they suspect abuse by knocking on the door or ringing the bell . Assistance from civil society organisations is crucial. NGOs must be given adequate funding so they can function efficiently and open 24-hour shelters providing medical assistance, legal advice, counselling, etc.

Domestic violence robs a woman of experiencing the fullness of life, as it takes away their inability to trust and love again. Trauma can take a lifetime to heal and our women deserve better.

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Domestic violence against women in India: A systematic review of a decade of quantitative studies

Affiliations.

1 a Division of Infectious Diseases , Emory University School of Medicine , Atlanta , GA , USA.
2 b Hubert Department of Global Health , Emory University Rollins School of Public Health , Atlanta , GA , USA.
3 c Department of Behavioral Sciences and Health Education , Emory University Rollins School of Public Health , Atlanta , GA , USA.
4 d Center for Sexuality and Health Disparities , University of Michigan School of Public Health and School of Nursing , Ann Arbor , MI , USA.
5 e General Internal Medicine , Temple University School of Medicine , Philadelphia , PA , USA.
6 f Department of Social and Behavioral Sciences , National AIDS Research Institute , Pune , India.
PMID: 26886155
PMCID: PMC4988937
DOI: 10.1080/17441692.2015.1119293

Domestic violence (DV) is prevalent among women in India and has been associated with poor mental and physical health. We performed a systematic review of 137 quantitative studies published in the prior decade that directly evaluated the DV experiences of Indian women to summarise the breadth of recent work and identify gaps in the literature. Among studies surveying at least two forms of abuse, a median 41% of women reported experiencing DV during their lifetime and 30% in the past year. We noted substantial inter-study variance in DV prevalence estimates, attributable in part to different study populations and settings, but also to a lack of standardisation, validation, and cultural adaptation of DV survey instruments. There was paucity of studies evaluating the DV experiences of women over age 50, residing in live-in relationships, same-sex relationships, tribal villages, and of women from the northern regions of India. Additionally, our review highlighted a gap in research evaluating the impact of DV on physical health. We conclude with a research agenda calling for additional qualitative and longitudinal quantitative studies to explore the DV correlates proposed by this quantitative literature to inform the development of a culturally tailored DV scale and prevention strategies.

Keywords: India; Intimate partner violence; domestic violence; review; spouse abuse.

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No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

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10 Case Study Number 1: Ramandeep and Aman

*At the time of the Family Court application

Pre-Migration History

The wedding ceremony took place in India, when Ramandeep was twenty-two and Aman was twenty-four years old. The couple planned to live in Canada and Ramandeep sponsored Aman to immigrate under the Spousal Sponsorship program. Six months after their marriage, Aman arrived in Canada. There is little background available on their pre-migration history, other than that their marriage was arranged by their respective families.

Settlement in Canada

When Aman first arrived in Canada, the couple lived with Ramandeep’s father while they saved up for their first house. From the time that he arrived, it became clear to Ramandeep that life with Aman was going to be difficult. From his first week, he started drinking every day and would harass Ramandeep and the neighbours, asking them to drive him to purchase alcohol. Aman found work within one month of arriving in Canada. Early in the marriage, Ramandeep worked outside of the home, but within a few months, she suffered an accident and was unable to continue. Aman pressured Ramandeep to start a family very early in the marriage and became verbally abusive when she was unable to conceive quickly. Three years after arriving in Canada, Aman was convicted for drinking and driving, and his license was revoked for a time. Aman’s verbal abuse and drinking continued throughout their marriage.

Four  years into their marriage, after the birth of their first child, a daughter, the emotional and verbal abuse escalated into physical abuse. Aman would routinely hit Ramandeep and force her to have sex with him when he drank. She did not tell anyone about the abuse, hoping that she could save her marriage. The couple soon purchased a modest house, with some financial support from Ramandeep’s father. Ramandeep started sleeping separately with her baby, living in the basement, and performing all the household chores and child-rearing duties. She received daily demands for sex and if she did not comply, Aman would hit her. When her daughter was four years old, Ramandeep became pregnant again. Aman pressured Ramandeep to have an abortion, but she refused. Her son was born with several medical issues. Ramandeep started working weekends to support the growing family. From the beginning, financial resources were not shared equally. For example, Ramandeep was solely responsible for extra expenses regarding the children, most notably medical bills related to their son’s care while Aman held property in India and sent money regularly to his brothers for its upkeep.

Domestic Violence 

Throughout the years of Ramandeep’s marriage, the abuse escalated from verbal to physical and sexual. During this time, Ramandeep had little-known informal support and spent much of her time and energy raising her children. The first time the police were called to the house was fourteen years into the marriage, in February 2006. Aman was heavily intoxicated and demanded the car keys. When Ramandeep refused, Aman grabbed her by her hair, pushed her to the ground and kicked her repeatedly. The children witnessed this assault. Ramandeep fled the house with the children and called 911.  The police arrived at the house and Aman was charged with assault and removed from the home. He was later convicted and ordered to have no contact with Ramandeep for one year. The police reported the incident to the Children's Aid Society . Ramandeep remained in the marital home with the children. After a separation of one year, making apologies and paying support, Aman returned home but Ramandeep did not invite him back into her bedroom.  Shortly after returning, Aman told Ramandeep that he wanted to send their six-year-old son to live with his parents in India. Ramandeep agreed reluctantly and the son was sent to India for two years. The verbal and physical abuse continued, and Aman demanded sex daily. Their son returned to Canada two years later in May 2009. Both children, at this point, had witnessed much violence over the years and were afraid of their father and would hide from him. In May 2009 another call was made to the police. This time, no charges were laid but CAS was contacted.

In December 2009 after this incident, the police were called again after   Ramandeep, now 39 , was beaten repeatedly by Aman with a closed fist. She ended up with a bruised cheek as punishment for not having dinner ready. The children were present, and at their mother’s request called 911. Aman was removed from the home, charged and convicted on grounds of assault. He was found guilty by the Criminal Court and was ordered to have no contact with Ramandeep from December 2010 for a period of a year. Aman circumvented the order and starting in April 2011, Aman would call Ramandeep on the phone and verbally abuse her when drunk.

Soon after the final incident, Ramandeep sought help from a lawyer. Because she feared for her safety, she sought a restraining order from the Family Court. She also sought a non-removal order for her children because she was afraid that Aman would attempt to take them out of Canada. Ramandeep pursued sole custody of the children as she had always been the one to care for almost all of their needs.  She was agreeable, even encouraging, of the children spending time with their father, with the provision that he could not drink or smoke in their presence. Ramandeep sought retroactive child support from the time of separation based on Aman’s current income as per the Federal Child Support Guidelines. Throughout the court proceedings , Aman was not upfront about all his assets (i.e. property, RRSPs and insurance). Ramandeep was left  financially  vulnerable because she had taken on debt to meet the needs of her children. There were sporadic conflicts between the children and, on one occasion, these conflicts caused the son to be removed by CAS . He was later returned to Ramandeep’s care.

Resolution  

After three years of litigation, Ramandeep gained sole custody of the children and Aman wass ordered to pay child support. The marital home was sold, and the proceeds were split equally. Aman paid his child support arrears from his portion of the proceeds. Ramandeep granted Aman limited visitation of the children, believing a father-child relationship was beneficial to the children. Aman has rejected his children and does not visit them. He cites his son’s behavioural issues as the reason. The son is undergoing counselling, in part, to help him cope with his father’s rejection.

Click on the links below to access Case Study questions related to the following:

Intersectional Vulnerabilities

Practitioners’ Subjectivity and Social Location

Social Policy and the Law

Migration and Transnationalism

Providing Supports to Victims of DV

Media Attributions

Image of spider’s web is licensed under a CC0 (Creative Commons Zero) license

This is an order in criminal cases mandated either by the police or the court that prevents any direct or indirect communication between an accused person and the victim. The accused is to have absolutely no contact with the victim. Such orders can be arranged at any point during the criminal justice process and typically remains in place until such time the accused is either sentenced or found not guilty at trial. Since September 2014, no-contact conditions have been required for all probation orders and conditional sentences unless:

the Court finds there are exceptional circumstances; or the victim agrees to the contact (Department of Justice, 2017)

For over 100 years, the Ontario Association of Children’s Aid Societies (OACAS) has been serving and promoting the welfare and well-being of children, youth and families in Ontario. Their vision is to re-imagine child welfare: to create an effective children’s services system that supports ALL children, youth, families, and communities to thrive. There are 50 Children’s Aid Societies (CASs) and Indigenous Child and Family Well-Being Agencies in Ontario. OACAS is an association representing 49 member organizations. Of these, 47 of 49 are mandated CASs and Indigenous Child and Family Well-Being Agencies; two are pre-mandated Indigenous agencies. More information about the services provided by the OACAS can be found at http://www.oacas.org/

to accuse someone officially of doing something illegal. (Merriam-Webster, Incorporated, 2019)

A restraining order can be requested from a family court if there is fear that a former spouse/partner could potentially cause harm to another member of the family. This is completed within a Family Court and must be mandated by a judge to be considered binding. Typically, it lists a number of conditions in which the spouse/partner must adhere to and obey and can either be broad or detailed, depending on the situation. An example of a general restraining order would be the instruction that the partner/spouse “cannot come near you or your children.” Alternatively, a more detailed order would stipulate that a partner/spouse cannot come to a place of employment, must maintain a specific distance, cannot visit children at school, or try to initiate communication at locations often frequented. It is applied for by way of a court application or a court motion (if urgent) (Ministry of Attorney General, 2009).

A Family Court judge is authorized to make a Non-removal order of a child(ren) based on evidence provided that shows there is risk of one parent taking the child(ren) away and would not return to Canada. If such an order is made then either one, or both, parents are not taking the child out of the geographical area specified in the court order (e.g. Greater Toronto Area, Province of Ontario, or Canada). When the court issues such Non-removal orders, it is registered with the Canadian Police Information Centre (CPIC) and is sent to the police with the CPIC Form.

One person has the responsibility and authority to make major decisions about the child, primarily about the child’s health education and religion.

These are the actions and activities which take place during a legal dispute. It is a blanket term that defines the entire legal process from beginning to end. This could also refer to a specific type of hearing or trial (Justice Education Society, 2019).

Domestic Violence in Immigrant Communities: Case Studies Copyright © 2020 by Ferzana Chaze, Bethany Osborne, Archana Medhekar and Purmina George is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License , except where otherwise noted.

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Understanding Domestic Violence in India During COVID-19: a Routine Activity Approach

Akshaya krishnakumar.

Jindal Institute of Behavioural Sciences, O.P. Jindal Global University, Sonipat, Haryana India

Shankey Verma

Domestic violence, a prevalent problem in India, saw an increase during the lockdown imposed to contain the spread of COVID-19. This article explores the factors associated with an increase in domestic violence incidents during COVID-19 by applying routine activity theory (RAT) framework. Data were drawn from the incidents of domestic violence reported in newspapers. Data was analyzed using content analysis and three major themes, i.e., three principle components of RAT—motivated offender, suitable target, and absence of capable guardian—were drawn. Findings reveal that sources of motivation in domestic violence perpetrators during the lockdown were alcohol and unemployment. The symbolic value that perpetrators associated with women, lower inertia, visibility, and accessibility to the perpetrators made women suitable targets of domestic violence. Lastly, shortage of police force and travel restrictions on formal and informal sources resulted in the absence of capable guardians. We conclude that changes in the routine activities of people during the COVID-19 lockdown provided more opportunities to the perpetrators of domestic violence.

Introduction

Protection of Women from Domestic Violence Act, 2005 defines domestic violence 1 as physical, sexual, verbal, emotional, and financial abuse against a woman by her partner or family members residing in a joint family (Kalokhe et al. 2016 ) and also includes unlawful dowry demands (Ram et al. 2019 ). Domestic violence is a public health concern and has adverse effects on the physical and mental health of women (Abramsky et al. 2011 ). India shares a significant global burden of domestic violence. Data from the National Family Health Survey 2015-16 shows that 31.1% of the ever-married Indian women aged between 15 and 49 years experienced spousal violence and almost 4% experienced violence during any pregnancy (International Institute for Population Sciences (IIPS) and ICF 2017 ). According to the National Crime Records Bureau’s (NCRB) latest data, domestic violence against women topped the list of categories of violence against women in India. Almost 90,000 cases related to crimes against women were registered in 2018. Out of these, almost one-third were related to cruelty by husband or his relatives (Outlook 2020 ).

Studies related to domestic violence in India are well documented. It is also acknowledged that domestic violence is associated with education, employment status, caste, and religion of women (Garg et al. 2019 ), sex of firstborn child (Weitzman 2019 ), alcohol consumption by husband (Ram et al. 2019 ), dowry (Pallikadavath and Bradley 2019 ), asthma, genital sores or ulcers, genital discharge, and sexually transmitted diseases (STIs) (Pengpid and Peltzer 2018 ), abortion (Stephenson et al. 2016 ), justification for wife beating (Begum et al. 2015 ), multiple sex partners of husband (Sinha et al. 2012 ), and controlling behavior by husband (Dalal and Lindqvist 2012 ).

Evidence from previous literature also suggests that violence against women increases during and post disasters. For instance, Rao ( 2020 ) examined intimate partner violence (IPV) and correlates among Indian women before and after the Indian Ocean tsunami of 2004. She found that IPV against women increased by 48% from 2005 to 2015 indicating how the demographically vulnerable factors become risk factors for IPV after a disaster (Rao 2020 ). Similar findings were inferred from another study conducted on Sri Lankan women during the tsunami (Fisher 2010 ). Fisher ( 2010 ) reported that women in tsunami affected areas were vulnerable to physical and sexual abuse. The study further noted that domestic violence continued beyond the tsunami period (Fisher 2010 ). Parkinson ( 2019 ) also noted an increase in and new cases of domestic violence in Australia post Black Saturday bushfires in 2009. Despite these evidences, there is a dearth of research related to domestic violence during pandemics in India.

Domestic Violence During COVID-19

There is a preliminary evidence to conclude that domestic violence during the COVID-19 increased globally. The restrictions imposed to curb the spread of virus resulted in an increase in violence. For instance, the frontline practitioners dedicated to support victims of domestic violence in Australia reported an increase in the frequency and severity of violence against women during COVID-19 (Fitz-Gibbon et al. 2020 ). There was an increase in new violence incidents as well. Around 42% of the Australian practitioners noted an increase in first-time family violence reporting by women (Fitz-Gibbon et al. 2020 ). Mahase ( 2020 ) reported a 60% increase in emergency calls related to violence against women by their intimate partners in Europe. Similarly, Agüero ( 2020 ) found a 48% increase in helpline calls related to domestic violence in Peru. While analyzing tweets related to domestic violence, Xue et al. ( 2020 ) highlighted that tweets mentioning an increase in domestic violence due to COVID-19 were frequent (Xue et al. 2020 ).

Regarding domestic violence during the COVID-19, only a few empirical published studies are available. For instance, a study on Ethiopian women found that almost one in four women experienced any form of domestic violence during the COVID-19 pandemic. Housewives aged less than 30 years, and with arrange marriage were at greater odds of experiencing domestic violence (Gebrewahd et al. 2020 ). Piquero et al. ( 2020 ) examined the association between stay-at-home order in Dallas and domestic violence during COVID-19. Using data from Dallas Police Department, they found an increase in domestic violence in the first two weeks after the lockdown was imposed and a decrease later (Piquero et al. 2020 ). Sediri et al. ( 2020 ) reported that violence against Tunisian women increased during the lockdown. Further, it was positively associated with depression, anxiety, and stress (Sediri et al. 2020 ). These studies can only be considered the first step towards a more profound understanding of domestic violence during COVID-19.

Domestic Violence in India during COVID-19

On 22nd March 2020, the Prime Minister of India announced a nationwide lockdown for one day. This lockdown was subsequently extended for a week, then for 21 days and finally until 3rd May 2020 to contain the spread of COVID-19. India declared COVID-19 a “notified disaster” under the Disaster Management Act, 2005 (Sharma et al. 2020 ). Extended lockdown and other social distancing measures imposed to curb the pandemic made women more vulnerable to domestic violence. Women were fighting a shadow pandemic inside their homes (UN Women 2020 ).

National Commission for Women’s (NCW) data showed that domestic violence complaints doubled after the nationwide lockdown was imposed in India (Vora et al. 2020 ). Tamil Nadu Police reported an increase in domestic violence complaints. They received approximately 25 calls every day during the lockdown period and registered at least 40 such cases (Kannan 2020 ). Similarly, Bangalore Police reported a spike in complaints from 10 calls to 25 calls every day from the victims of domestic violence (Peter 2020 ). These data from different sources indicate that domestic violence incidents increased across the country during the lockdown. On the contrary, organizations such as Jagori, Shakti Shalini, and AKS Foundation reported a decrease in complaint calls related to domestic violence (Ghoshal 2020 ). The decrease could be attributed to confinement at home, constant monitoring (Piquero et al. 2020 ) and controlling decision-making by the abuser, social isolation of victims from friends and family members (Kaukinen 2020 ), and reduced options for support (Usher et al. 2020 ).

Some studies explored the phenomena of domestic violence during and post-disaster in India such as Hines ( 2007 ) and Rao ( 2020 ). However, existing literature on domestic violence during the lockdown is scarce. Moreover, the lockdown situation is different from other types of disasters. Almost all the states were affected by the presence of this virus at a single time. The question remains as to what factors are associated with an increase in domestic violence during the COVID-19 pandemic? Whether any theoretical framework could explain these factors? Limited studies used routine activity theory (RAT) in unfolding the complex phenomena of domestic violence (Mannon 1997 ; Roman and Reid 2012 ). To our knowledge, no study is conducted in India to date that applied the framework of RAT to understand factors resulting in the perpetration of domestic violence, especially during a pandemic. Several authors pitched for the application of criminological theories such as RAT to predict an increase or decrease in crimes during COVID-19 by linking it with specific changes in routine activities (Piquero et al. 2020 ; Stickle and Felson 2020 ). Therefore, this paper aims to explore the factors resulting in an increase in domestic violence cases in India during the COVID-19 pandemic by incorporating the routine activity theoretical model.

A Routine Activity Approach

Cohen and Felson ( 1979 ) propounded RAT while analyzing the change in crime rates in the USA from 1947 to 1974. Instead of emphasizing on idiosyncrasies of offenders like their contemporaries, they focused on factors that facilitate criminal acts (Cohen and Felson 1979 ). Since then, various studies adopted RAT to explain different types of criminal acts: for example, property crimes (Massey et al. 1989 ); domestic and intimate partner violence (Mannon 1997 ); women’s stalking victimization; automotive thefts (Rice and Csmith 2002 ); and cybercrimes (Nguyen 2020 ).

Cohen and Felson ( 1979 ) elucidated three factors that occur together in space and time to give rise to criminal acts: (1) motivated offenders, (2) suitable targets, and (3) absence of capable guardians (Cohen and Felson 1979 ). A motivated offender is one who is both inclined and able to commit a crime (Felson and Cohen 1980 ). A suitable target is a person/object which can be threatened by the potential offender (Miro 2014 ). Lastly, a capable guardian is a person or a thing that can prevent or deter the potential criminal from acting on its evil intentions (Felson and Cohen 1980 ). According to the theorists, the daily activities of our lives are influenced by the convergence of these three elements in time and space. These daily activities were called routine activities. Felson and Cohen argued that criminal and non-criminal activities are interdependent and that our routine activities, even if legitimate, provide opportunities to commit crime (Felson and Cohen 1980 ).

In the case of domestic violence, mostly men are seen as perpetrators. Though men also experience domestic violence (Malik and Nadda 2019 ) but in societies where patriarchy prevails, domestic violence is usually associated with women as victims (Dutt 2018 ). Felson ( 1987 ) identified that offenders often want to put the least amount of effort to carry out the criminal activities such as traveling significantly less distance to find a target and choosing a target who is evident and proximate (Felson 1987 ). This explains the rise in domestic violence cases during COVID-19, as home became the very space where the three elements that Cohen and Felson identified converged. A motivated offender now has to put in the least amount of effort to find its target.

In its original form, the RAT assumed motivation to be given and placed much attention on the other two factors. Over the years, many researchers tried to interpret RAT from different lens. One of the most popular approaches in understanding violence against women is the feminist interpretation of RAT (Schwartz and Pitts 1995 ; Mustaine and Tewksbury 2002 ; Mustaine and Tewksbury 1999 ; Schwartz et al. 2001 ; Franklin et al. 2012 ). The feminist interpretation of RAT stresses the importance of examining societal conditions that facilitates violence against women. This can result in better understanding of the element of motivated offender (Schwartz and Pitts 1995 ). Borrowing the idea from the feminist interpretation of RAT, we found aspects from the reported and reviewed incidents which can help us understand the factors responsible for fueling persons’ motivation to perpetrate violence against their partners during the pandemic. These aspects are discussed in the paper later.

For a crime to occur, the mere presence of a motivated offender is not enough. The presence of a suitable target is equally essential. Felson and Cohen ( 1980 ) identified four components that assess the suitability of a target—value, inertia, visibility, and access. In RAT, all these four components are considered from the viewpoint of an offender rather than a target. To understand the factors that made women suitable targets of domestic violence during COVID-19, we looked at the four components identified by Cohen and Felson.

A potential offender would be interested in a target if it perceives any value in the target. Value is depended on how desirable the target is to a potential offender. Inertia, on the other hand, is the aspect(s) of a person/property that hinders or interferes with its suitability as a target (Felson and Cohen 1980 ). A suitable target visibility that poses the risk of being discovered by the offender combined with easy accessibility to the target are the other two factors that make a target more suitable (Felson and Cohen 1980 ). The lockdown order to contain the spread of COVID-19 was passed abruptly in India. This did not give time for women experiencing domestic violence to seek a refuge in safer places. The incidents related to the four attributes of a suitable target are discussed further in detail under the findings.

The final element that the RAT necessitates for a crime to occur is the absence of a capable guardian. The suitability of a target is also dependent on the presence or absence of a capable guardian. Felson ( 1994 ) suggested that most crimes can be prevented through informal means of social control. The informal means of social control is usually applied by neighbors, family members, or friends. The control can be applied through threats, watching, and sanctioning (Mannon 1997 ). Formal means of social control such as police and courts are resorted to when informal means of control fail or prove to be incapable in preventing a crime (Felson 1994 ). Under the findings we have discussed how limited availability of formal (police and NGOs) and informal sources (family and neighbors) could be a causal factor for the increase in domestic violence.

The application of RAT to understand domestic violence is not limited to the lockdown period. Previous studies documented that one of the unique aspects about applying RAT to understand domestic violence is that the theory focuses on the situational factors related to crime victimization (Mannon 1997 ; Miethe et al. 1987 ; Hayes 2018 ). For example, Hayes ( 2018 ) found that the presence of a victim’s friends/family contributed to a 60% decrease in re-victimization (Hayes 2018 ). The study mentioned that examining one of the factors identified by RAT, i.e., the absence of a capable guardian, contributed to a better understanding of domestic violence. Likewise, studying all the three factors identified by the theory could contribute to an in-depth understanding of the situational factors that facilitate domestic violence. This understanding can be helpful in formulating better prevention strategies.

Methodology

Data collection.

Firstly, we searched news articles on the Google search engine using a combination of certain keywords. These keywords were “domestic violence,” “intimate partner violence,” “spousal violence,” “marital violence,” “lockdown,” “COVID-19,” “coronavirus,” and “India.” We used online newspaper sources namely The Economic Times, The Times of India, Scroll.in, The Hindu, The Diplomat, Deccan Herald, The Wire, News18, BBC News, Times Now, and Al Jazeera. Using Google search date and site syntax, we collected news articles published between 22nd March 2020 and 31st May 2020. We collected news articles published in the English language only. Hence, translation and back translation was not required.

Data Analysis

After data collection from the online newspapers, we arranged the articles chronologically. In total, we analyzed 59 news articles. We analyzed the content of these articles manually. We excluded repetitive articles or articles with no mention of domestic violence incidents or associated factors from the analysis. Themes were established a priori rather than adopting an inductive approach (Braun and Clarke 2006 ). More specifically, we examined incidents of domestic violence reported in these articles to understand how the existing factors resulting in domestic violence perpetration fit into the three factors under RAT. Our pre-existing themes were the three factors under RAT. Initially, both the authors coded the data individually. Later, we exchanged the data to achieve consensus concerning the codes related to appropriate themes. We merged similar codes into a single code. To obtain maximum information, we coded incidents in which more than one code emerged individually. In total, we obtained 27 codes under the three different themes. Any disagreement between the authors was mutually resolved.

Ethical Considerations

Research participants’ safety is of paramount importance while researching domestic violence during COVID-19 (Sexual Violence Research Initiative 2020 ). Due to the government’s guidelines on travel restrictions, we could not go onto the field and collect firsthand data from either victims of domestic violence or institutions working towards domestic violence such as law enforcement agencies, NGOs, Accredit Social Health Activists (ASHA) workers. We also decided not to go for telephonic interviews with domestic violence victims due to their safety and to prevent them from re-victimization. As a feasible option, we decided to collect and review domestic violence cases reported in newspapers during the lockdown period in India. The data used in this article is secondary. Therefore, ethical approval from the Institutional Review Board was not required.

Descriptive Statistics

In total, we reviewed 59 articles that published news related to domestic violence during COVID-19 in India. The majority of the articles were published in The Times of India (13), followed by The Hindu (12), and Hindustan Times (7). There were five articles each in Scroll.in, The Economic Times, and The New India Express; three in The Indian Express; two each in The Diplomat and Al Jazeera; and one each in BBC News, Deccan Herald, News18, Times Now, and The Wire (Table (Table1). 1 ). We found 25 incidents of domestic violence wherein the experiences of the victims were described. One incident was repetitive and excluded from the analysis. Additionally, one case was of domestic violence from the parents of the victim and not included in the analysis. The final number of incidents reviewed was 23.

Descriptive statistics of newspaper articles and codes

Source (number of articles collected)	Themes
Source (number of articles collected)	A motivated offender ( )	A suitable target ( )	Absence of a capable guardian ( )
The Times of India (13)	1	2	-
The Hindu (12)	3	3	1
Hindustan Times (7)	-	4	2
Scroll.in (5)	-	1	-
The Economic Times (5)	-	-	-
The New India Express (5)	1	2	1
The Indian Express (3)	-	1	-
The Diplomat (2)	1	-	-
Al Jazeera (2)	-	1	-
Deccan Herald (1)	2	-	1
News18 (1)	-	1	-
The Wire (1)	-	1	-
BBC News (1)	-	1	1
Times Now (1)	-	-	1

n , number of codes

A Motivated Offender

From the content analysis, we found a total of nine incidents relevant in understanding the possible motivations of the offender. We found four incidents in which the primary reason for domestic violence was alcohol. In three of the four incidents, the primary reason for perpetrating domestic violence was the abuser experiencing withdrawal symptoms due to the non-availability of alcohol. In an incident from Hyderabad, a “woman and her teenage son from an earlier marriage, were facing the brunt of her second husband’s frustration over not getting alcohol during the lockdown (Joy 2020 ).” Similarly, one victim of domestic violence told Tamil Nadu police that her husband harassed her daily due to alcohol’s non-availability (Kannan 2020 ). In the third incident, a college-going youth reported that “his father was becoming violent, beating up his mother and even grandmother, because he was having alcohol withdrawals” (Basu 2020 ) . Not only experiencing alcohol withdrawal symptoms but also consuming alcohol was found to be a cause of domestic violence. A domestic violence victim shared that “she was depressed as her husband had taken to alcohol abuse out of anxiety over a financial crisis” (Basu 2020 ) .

The content analysis also indicated unemployment as a factor that fueled the motivation of an offender. We found three incidents in which unemployment and job security were the causes of perpetrating domestic violence. A domestic violence victim shared that her husband lost his factory job recently and beats her in front of her kids (Lal 2020 ). In the second incident, “a woman from Kolkata was caught at home with her husband who was jobless since the lockdown. He was beating the wife, took away all her savings and was assaulting her in front of her son” (PTI 2020 ). The third incident was of a woman who worked in a play school… “her husband was told that he may be laid off and she became a target for his ire and insecurity” (Basu 2020 ) .

A related factor that was found to be contributing to the motivation was frustration and anxiety. A victim of domestic violence reported that when her alcoholic husband had a job, things were balanced. After he became unemployed, he stayed at home the entire day, got frustrated, consumed alcohol, and created ruckus (Gatty and Rathee 2020 ). This reflects the intersection of alcohol consumption, unemployment, and frustration as a cause of domestic violence.

A Suitable Target

We found and reviewed sixteen cases to understand why the women were suitable targets of domestic violence in the eyes of a motivated offender during the lockdown. From the content analysis, we found the following instances related to the attributes of value and inertia. In one incident, a man murdered his wife, in front of his daughter, suspecting her of infidelity (Shivakumar 2020 ). Basu ( 2020 ) reported a similar incident where a woman was allegedly killed by her husband for protesting against his extra-marital affair . In another incident, a Bangalore based woman alleged that her husband stopped opening his grocery store and stopped taking shower after she denied his sexual requests. When the woman refused to have sex with him, he allegedly hit her (News18 2020 ). The fourth incident was of a 34 years old woman whose husband had abandoned her for eight years for another woman, suddenly returned during lockdown as she continued to stay with his parents. He is now sexually abusing her daily (Basu 2020 ).

The content analysis also suggested that increased visibility and accessibility of the victim during the lockdown contributed to them being subjected to violence. In one case, a victim of regular verbal and emotional domestic violence claimed that she had her job as a savior from her husband’s brutality. Her husband’s job also kept him away from her. With the imposition of the lockdown, she had to live in a constant state of fear of victimization (Deshpande 2020 ). In another case, a victim of domestic violence shared that she would run into the narrow lanes of a slum when she was beaten by her husband. Due to the lockdown and police barricade she could not step out of her house and had to stay indoors (S, R. 2020 ). A woman from Nainital reported that she is unable to travel to her home in Delhi and her husband is abusing and beating her (Roy 2020a ). A similar story was narrated by a 43 years old victim of domestic violence. She was all set to walk out of her marriage and shift into a working women’s hostel on April 1. But the COVID-19 lockdown means she is now locked in with her husband and mother-in-law in a two-bedroom flat in Kolkata (Basu 2020 ) .

Absence of a Capable Guardian

Through the content analysis, we found four relevant incidents related to the absence of a capable guardian. These incidents reflected how the absence of a capable guardian facilitated domestic violence during the lockdown. The prime formal source that acts as a capable guardian against any form of violent crime is the police. Content analysis revealed that there was a shortage of police force during the lockdown. When the pandemic hit the nation, much of the police force was at the frontline, engaged in the strict implementation of lockdown. Many officers were deployed at the containment zones. Others were present at state borders to prevent the entry of people and vehicles from other states. As the police were busy enforcing the lockdown restrictions it was found that cases of police apathy against domestic violence victims also increased (Chandra 2020 ). In addition, courts were not functioning regularly and were only hearing emergency pleas (Ratnam 2020 ).

The next formal source that acts as a capable guardian for the victims of domestic violence is the support services. These support services are NGOs, ASHA workers, and counseling services providers. Several NGOs and counseling service providers launched specific helpline numbers to offer support to these victims. But many such helpline reported having received few complaints. For example, a Delhi-based victim of domestic violence sought the help of her brother who was living in Nepal. Her brother reached out to an NGO for help. The NGO with the help of police intervened to mediate between abuser and victim and asked the woman to stay at home during the lockdown. After this intervention, the condition of the woman worsened and she suffered repeated abuse (Ratnam 2020 ).

Due to lockdown and travel restrictions, victims’ parents or family members were not able to intervene physically. In one case from Rajasthan, the complaint was registered by the victim’s father (Vijayalakshmi and Dev 2020 ). In another case, the complaint was filed by the victim’s brother who was based in Nepal and could not intervene physically (Ratnam 2020 ). In some cases condition of women who sought help from their parents was deplorable due to mental and financial stress posed by the lockdown. For instance, a victim of verbal and physical abuse by her husband went to her mother’s house to save herself just before the first lockdown was imposed. Rather than feeling safe, she started feeling like a burden on her family due to the dipping income and loss of job of her brother. As a result, she was beaten up by her brother (Joy 2020 ). In general, the travel restrictions imposed by the government limited the ability of victims’ families to intervene and act as a capable guardian.

With the travel restrictions and the inability of victim’s family to intervene, people who could act as guardians are the neighbors. When victims are locked in with their abusers, neighbors could be the one to act first, intervene and prevent domestic abuse owing to the physical proximity to the victim. In one case, a 9-year-old daughter of a victim of domestic violence sought her neighbor’s help, who then intervened and prevented further abuse (Deshpande 2020 ). However, this was not the case with everyone. Domestic violence in India is seen as a private affair and many people think twice before intervening. In a recent incident, a woman was brutally thrashed by her husband in Uttar Pradesh, which allegedly led to her death. Instead of intervening and helping the woman, the neighbors were seen to be recording the video of the incident (Mirror Now Digital 2020 ).

The primary objective of this article was to explore the factors resulting in domestic violence during the COVID-19 pandemic in India. From the content analysis of the online newspaper articles, we found that alcohol consumption, unemployment and job uncertainties, and frustrations explained the motivation in offenders. As mentioned earlier, the RAT assumes the motivation of the offender to be given; we borrowed the ideas from the feminist interpretation of RAT that looked at societal conditions facilitating violence against women (Schwartz and Pitts 1995 ). Therefore, while applying RAT to understand surge in the cases of domestic violence during the pandemic, the above mentioned three factors can be seen as playing a major role in fueling the motivation of a potential offender.

The relationship between alcohol and domestic violence is not something that emerged during COVID-19. Many studies concluded that alcohol does not cause domestic violence. Rather it is seen as a contributing factor towards the perpetration of domestic violence (Graham et al. 2011 ; Leonard 2001 ; Moreira et al. 2011 ). Some studies found that alcohol consumption can increase the risk of perpetrating and severity of violence (Gadd et al. 2019 ; Graham et al. 2011 ). A report by the World Health Organisation (WHO) stated that alcohol consumption could severely impact a person’s physical and cognitive functioning which reduces the self-control and in turn makes the person incapable of resorting to non-violent means to resolve a conflict in a relationship (World Health Organisation 2006 ).

Even before the COVID-19 pandemic took over the world, in countries such as India, Uganda, Vietnam, the USA, and Egypt, the correlation between alcohol consumption and domestic violence was very high (World Health Organisation 2006 ). When countries across the world started imposing lockdowns to control the spread of novel coronavirus, many imposed restrictions on the purchase and sale of alcohol (Narasimha et al. 2020 ). Countries such as South Africa, Thailand, Greenland, and Sri Lanka imposed either a blanket ban or restricted it to particular places where domestic abuse prevalence was high. Alcohol shops were closed for business in India as well when the lockdown was imposed (Neufeld et al. 2020 ). However, data on domestic violence during the lockdown indicates that the liquor sale ban was not that fruitful.

NCW and many states reported an increase in domestic violence case (Vora et al. 2020 ). Two reasons can be attributed to understanding this phenomenon. First is the withdrawal from alcohol. Previous research indicates that alcohol withdrawal syndrome contributes to domestic violence (Gadd et al. 2019 ). During COVID-19 many individuals experienced alcohol withdrawal symptoms due to the non-availability of alcohol (Verma et al. 2020 ). There was a 4-fold increase in the number of patients with alcohol withdrawal symptoms visiting hospitals (Ahmed et al. 2020 ). Alcohol withdrawal results in the development of some mental and physical reactions (Varma 2020 ) and violence could be one of them. It can be argued that alcohol consumption or alcohol withdrawal could be a contributing factor to domestic violence.

Secondly, the ban on alcohol does not mean that consumption also came to a halt. Many black-marketing (Nadkarni et al. 2020 ) and illegal purchase and sale of alcohol cases were reported (Singh et al. 2020 ). There were reports of seizure of illicit liquor by the authorities. For example, in the national capital of India, police seized 855 Indian made foreign liquor (IMFL) bottles, 12,509 country made liquor (CML) bottles, and 4868 beer bottles (Ghosh et al. 2020 ). It can be inferred that alcohol consumption might have come down a little, but it continued as people resorted to illegitimate means to purchase it.

Next source of motivation found was unemployment. Previous studies conducted in India highlighted the association between husband’s unemployment and domestic violence (Subodh et al. 2014 ). Krishnan et al. ( 2010 ) found women whose husbands maintained stable employment were less likely to experience domestic violence. Countries across the world faced the employment crisis as COVID-19 affected the functioning of all kinds of businesses. COVID-19 severely hit several sectors of the Indian economy including farming (Mukhopadhyay 2020 ), tourism, automobile, oil industry, financial market (Mehta and Jha 2020 ), and sugar industry (Solomon et al. 2020 ). Until May 2020, India’s unemployment rate was at 24% (Mishra and Rampal 2020 ). An online survey conducted by Economictimes.com to understand the impact of COVID-19 found that out of the 3,074 respondents, 39% suffered salary cut and 15% were about to lose their jobs (Mehta 2020 ). The National Restaurants Association of India also predicted that without any help from the government and no tax and rent relaxations, 4 out of 10 restaurants in India would not open for business after lockdown is lifted (D’Souza 2020 ). This spike in unemployment rates, coupled with uncertainty about the future, could contribute to domestic violence. There are predictions that after the world gets through this pandemic, unemployment rates will soar, which would create a surge in domestic violence cases (Godbole 2020 ; Roy 2020b ).

The second element that Cohen and Felson mentioned is a suitable target. As identified earlier the components of value, inertia, visibility and accessibility make a target suitable for the offender. Women’s visibility and accessibility during the lockdown made them suitable targets of domestic violence. With the social distancing orders in place and virus spreading rapidly, lot of battered women shelters could not accommodate victims of domestic violence. Due to the lockdown order, many women were in constant proximity to their potential abuser. While quarantine and social distancing are necessary to contain the spread of the virus, it can also lead to social and functional isolation (Gelder et al. 2020 ). Prior research suggests that the perpetrator’s controlling behavior would increase and the lockdown would give them the opportunity to monitor all of their victim’s daily activities (Kaukinen 2020 ; Boserup et al. 2020 ; Gelder et al. 2020 ). The proximity would prevent the target from reaching out for help. The motivated offender and a suitable target existed in the same space resulting in perpetration of domestic violence.

The third component of the RAT was absence of a capable guardian. A study conducted on married Indian women to understand the help-seeking pattern of victims of domestic violence found that about 60% of the women reported that they would seek help. These women’s first preference was their parents followed by neighbors (Mahapatro et al. 2014 ). In Indian culture it is a tradition that after marriage woman leaves her parental house and lives with her husband and his family. This limited the physical intervening capacity of the target’s family members. On the other hand, in some cases, targets might also fear to approach the neighbors for help thinking that they would be judged negatively by them. As highlighted by Snell-Rood ( 2015 ), victims of domestic violence seek emotional help and direct intervention from their neighbors but are reluctant due to stigma. Secondly, neighbors themselves might be reluctant in intervening in the current circumstances as COVID-19 spreads through human contact.

One study found that out of all women who experienced domestic violence, only 4% approached legal aid cell or NGOs (Kamat et al. 2013 ). This low approach rate reflects that support service providers cannot intervene unless targets are willing to approach them. Another reason for low approach is lack of resources. The guidelines on essential services by the Ministry of Home Affairs did not make NGOs as essential service (Ministry of Home Affairs 2020 ). The travel restrictions were applicable to them and limited their physical intervening capability. At best they could forward the complaints received to the law enforcement agencies. The majority of them have telephone helpline numbers, WhatsApp numbers and email addresses to file complaint or request help. However, the telephone numbers were not available 24*7 in some cases. Filing complaint or requesting help through WhatsApp or email provides an advantage that receiver can read it anytime. On the contrary telephonic complaint requires an attendant to receive complaint at the time of the call received. However, the former medium requires a smart phone or computer and an active internet connection. The digital infrastructure of India is not at par with the developed nations. According to Pew Research Centre, only 32% of the Indian adults use smartphones and 47% use basic phone that cannot connect to the internet. Moreover, 40% of men and only 23% of women use smartphones in India (Silver et al. 2019 ). In addition to this, only 10.7% rural and urban households have computer and 23.8% household have internet facility (National Statistical Office 2019 ). Both approach of NGOs towards victim and victims’ approach towards NGOs limited the role of NGOs as a capable guardian in preventing domestic violence during the pandemic. Further, perpetrators of domestic violence may intensify coercion and control by controlling the technology accessed by the targets. This might include monitoring targets’ communication with both formal and informal sources and restricting access to the internet.

RAT states that capable guardian plays a significant role in crime prevention and its absence can result in huge spike in crime rates irrespective of any change in structural conditions motivating the offender. This was observed during the lockdown as well. With no capable guardian to intervene and deter the motivated offender, women became victims of abuse within the four walls of their houses.

Limitations

There are certain limitations to this article. First is the nature and source of data. This article examined domestic violence cases reported in newspapers that are a secondary source of data. The dependence on online newspapers only to search reported cases of domestic violence is a limitation of this study. The limited content in the newspapers limited our ability to distinguish between situational couple violence and domestic violence. While domestic violence is perpetrated to exert a general control over one’s partner, there is no general pattern of control in situational couple violence (Johnson and Leone 2005 ). From the content analysis, we could not identify the context and severity of the violence which is a major limitation of this study. Further, all the newspapers were in the English language. There is a possibility of reporting more cases of domestic violence in local newspapers and in regional languages which this study did not consider. As noted by Carlyle et al. ( 2008 ) that newspaper framing of domestic violence is heavily skewed, there is a possibility of selection and reporting bias among journalists about news related to domestic violence.

Second, we used a fairly less number of cases, i.e., 25 to explain the three components of RAT given by Cohen and Felson. Although the cases used in this paper explain the phenomena of domestic violence from the RAT’s perspective, we cannot generalize the findings to a larger population. Future studies can collect firsthand data, both qualitative and quantitative, to understand the applicability of RAT to domestic violence.

Third, this study was confined to women as victims of domestic violence. There is sufficient evidence that men also experience domestic violence. For example, Malik and Nadda ( 2019 ) reported that one in two married men aged between 21 and 49 years experienced domestic violence from their wives in India. Moreover, individuals from the third gender and different sexual orientations are also victims of violence from their partners (Dank et al. 2013 ). Future research should extend the application of RAT in domestic violence to other genders and sexual orientation.

Last, there was a discrepancy in reports regarding the magnitude of domestic violence during the COVID-19. While the majority of the sources in India reported an increase in domestic violence complaints than normal during the pandemic, a few sources reported a decrease in complaints related to domestic violence. For example, organizations such as Jagori and Shakti Shalini reported a drop in domestic violence complaints (Ghoshal 2020 ). Similarly, officials of Karnataka’s women and child development department reported a 57% decrease in domestic violence calls between 23rd March 2020 and 13th April 2020 (Mulla 2020 ). More empirical studies are required to get a lucid picture.

Cohen and Felson repeatedly highlighted that changes in our routine activities provide an opportunity to commit more crimes (Cohen and Felson 1979 ). With the pandemic affecting almost all the countries in the world, there has been a significant change in our routine activities. With India and other countries imposing lockdown or issuing stay-at-home orders, the usual routine activities of people have completely changed. During the lockdown, people did not go out of their homes for work, school, or leisure activities. They were only allowed to step out of their homes to access essential services. People engaged in providing essential services were the only ones who continued with their routine activities even during the lockdown. As Cohen and Felson ( 1979 ) highlighted it is the legal routine activities of individuals that provide opportunities for illegal activities (Cohen and Felson 1979 ). Applying this principle to the issue in hand, the legitimate activity of following a legal order to stay inside the home to contain the spread of COVID-19 resulted in allowing a likely offender who saw their partners as suitable targets to inflict violence, in the absence of capable guardians.

RAT is applied in a few studies to understand domestic violence. The discussions so far however point out that the importance of RAT in understanding the highly prevalent phenomena of domestic violence cannot be denied. Removal of one of the three factors that facilitate domestic violence from existing in the same time and space, i.e., a motivated offender, suitable target, and absence of a capable guardian could result in a drastic decrease of victims of domestic violence.

Declarations

Data used for this study was secondary in nature. No ethical approval from the Institutional Review Board was required.

This study did not involve subjects. Therefore, informed consent was not required.

The authors report no conflict of interest.

1 Domestic violence is a broad term that includes violence from a partner, child abuse, and elderly abuse. However for this article, domestic violence, unless specified, would mean violence against women from their partner/husband only.

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Gokhale Institute of Politics and Economics
Department of Population Studies

Title:	A Study in Domestic Violence against Women in India Determinants and Consequences
Researcher:	Patrikar, Seema
Guide(s):
Keywords:	Social Sciences Social Sciences General Sociology
University:	Gokhale Institute of Politics and Economics
Completed Date:	2014
Abstract:	Although violence at home affects the lives of millions of women worldwide, across diverse socioeconomic classes, it is yet under recognized human rights violation in the world. It can trigger a profound health problem that could sap women s energy, debilitate their physical and mental health, and erode their self-esteem. Until recently, the general view was that cases of violence against women could be appropriately addressed through the social welfare and justice systems. During the past decade, however, the combined efforts of grass-roots and international women s organizations, international experts, and governments have resulted in a profound transformation in public awareness regarding this issue. Violence against women, also known as gender-based violence, is now widely recognized as a serious human rights abuse. The official United Nations definition of gender-based violence was first presented in 1993 when the General Assembly passed the Declaration on the Elimination of Violence against Women. Domestic Violence is a sensitive topic and the varying causes which can spark the violence within the four walls of homes need to be analysed carefully and study of the factors causing the violence may prevent a family to suffer from the menace of domestic violence. In India comprehensive household data on the prevalence and costs of domestic violence are lacking. This hidden nature of domestic violence against women remains so due to the social construction of the divide between public and private affairs, either because women are ashamed to discuss about it, or because no one has thought to ask them about it, or because it is considered as a natural part of culture. Domestic violence is to be perceived not as a law and order problem alone. Its impact has far reaching effects on the family life, health of woman, life of children etc. Studies such as these which examines the causes, its nature and manifestations and consequences would assist the general society.
Pagination:	v, 270
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In the past, he has been in the forefront of many controversies
From alleged domestic violence case to wildlife offences, he has found himself in trouble multiple times

Kannada actor Darshan Thoogudeepa was arrested in connection with a murder case on June 11 in Bengaluru. Darshan became one of the leading actors in the Kannada film industry by playing a righteous man in films. However, for the past 10 years, his name has been embroiled in multiple controversies.

1. DOMESTIC VIOLENCE ALLEGATIONS

Back in 2011, Darshan was arrested after his wife, Vijayalakshmi filed a complaint of domestic violence . He spent 14 days in judicial custody at Parappana Agrahara during that time and was later let out on bail. At that time, they resolved their issues out of court.

2. CAR CRASH

3. alleged attack on waiter.

In 2021, Darshan was accused of allegedly assaulting a waiter at a hotel in Mysuru. However, it is speculated that the police had to cover up the incident and compensated the waiter with Rs 50,000.

4. WILDLIFE OFFENCE

Darshan, his wife Vijayalakshmi and his farmhouse manager Nagaraj, were accused of illegally keeping migratory birds at his farmhouse in Kempainahundi village. The case was filed after Darshan reportedly said in an interview that he has a bar-headed goose. Reportedly, the interviewer showed the visuals of the birds kept in a cage.

5. LET DOGS LOOSE ON PEOPLE

In November 2023, actor Darshan was booked after his pet dog attacked a woman . According to her, she noticed three dogs belonging to actor Darshan next to her car. When she asked them to take them away, Darshan's men argued with her. She alleged that one of the dogs charged at her, bit her multiple times and tore her clothes.

The police investigation, however, claimed that Darshan wasn't directly involved in the incident.

Not just these, he was also in the news for many other controversies. In 2015, he shot at a stranger with his pistol as he was talking on his phone loudly. The stranger, however, escaped unhurt. At that time, a famous Kannada actor was with Darshan. He was scared to see his 'rash' behaviour and has maintained a distance since then.

COMMENTS

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Famous Cases of Domestic Violence in India

Domestic Violence in India

Top controversial Domestic Violence Cases in India

Issue involved in the Case

Decision made by the court

Inder Raj Malik vs Sunita Malik (1986)

Issues involved in the case

Hiralal P Harsora and Ors vs Kusum Narottamdas Harsora and Ors (2016)

Sandhya Wankhede vs Manoj Bhimrao Wankhede (2011)

Rajesh Kumar and Others vs State of UP (2017)

Bibi Parwana Khatoon vs State of Bihar (2017)

Kamlesh Devi vs Jaipal and Ors (2019)

Ajay Kumar vs Lata Sharuti (2019)

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Top 10 domestic violence cases

What is domestic violence

Types of domestic violence

Sexual violence

Physical violence

Emotional violence

Economic violence

Laws that deal with domestic violence cases

Protection of Women Against Domestic Violence Act, 2005

The Dowry Prohibition Act, 1961

Section 498A IPC

How domestic violence laws are misused

Landmark domestic violence cases in India

Issue involved in the case

Judgement given by the Court

Inder Raj Malik v. Sunita Malik, (1986)

Issues involved in the case

Hiralal P. Harsora and Ors v. Kusum Narottamdas Harsora and Ors, (2016)

Sandhya Wankhede v. Manoj Bhimrao Wankhede, (2011)

V.D. Bhanot v. Savita Bhanot, (2012)

Rajesh Kumar and others v. the State of U.P, 2017

Arnesh Kumar v. the State of Bihar & Anr, 2014

Bibi Parwana Khatoon v. State of Bihar, (2017)

Kamlesh Devi v. Jaipal and Ors., (2019)

Judgement given by the court

Ajay Kumar v. Lata @ Sharuti, (2019)

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Confronting dowry-related violence in India: Women at the center of justice

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Prevalence of intimate partner violence among Indian women and their determinants: a cross-sectional study from national family health survey – 5

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Outcome characteristics: intimate partner violence status

Emotional violence

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Domestic Violence 

Resolution  