Domestic violence act: 20 years of power and protection

This month marks two decades of the domestic violence act. In a new series, HT looks at what’s working on the ground, and what’s not

- Namita Bhandare

The first time he hit her, they had been married for less than a week.

After that the beatings became routine. Sometimes there was too much salt in the food, sometimes too little. Anything could set him off.

K told me they had never even spoken when she married him at 18. But she felt she had no choice but to marry — she needed to lighten the load on her mother, a single woman, trying to make ends meet as a domestic worker.

After marriage, K moved into a two-room dwelling she shared with her husband’s parents, his unmarried younger brother and a sister at Delhi's Badarpur border. It was far from where her mother and younger sister lived. When she spoke to them on the phone, somebody from her husband’s family would always be around.

So she never told her mother about the beatings. When she complained to her mother-in-law, she was tol I married couples fight. Learn to keep things to yourself.”

She wasn't the only one. One in three women in India is subjected to domestic violence, according to the National Family Health Survey-5. Every day, 17 women were killed because of dowry, according to the National Crime Records Bureau's Crime (NCRB) in India 2022. Domestic violence accounted for 31.4% of all crimes against women, the most frequently reported crime category against women, according to NCRB.

Domestic violence knows no geography, caste or religion; no socioeconomic, ethnic or profession divide. Yet, despite being nearly ubiquitous, it remains a crime in plain sight, rarely spoken about and seldom making headlines unless the violence is egregious and causes serious injury or death. And there is marital rape. The government told the Supreme Court in October 2024 that it cannot be criminalised because it will “destroy the institution of marriage”.