Chapter 14 - Domestic Violence Act : 2005

Question- Introduce the protection of women from Domestic Violence Act, 2005.

Related Short Answer Questions

1. What can be called domestic violence?

2. What rights has the government made for the victims?

Answer -

Protection of Women from Domestic Violence Act, 2005 is an Act passed by the Parliament of India which aims to save women from domestic violence and to provide legal aid to the victim women. It came into force on 26 October 2006. Physical abuse means physical pain, harm or threat to life or limb or health or sexual abuse means violation of dignity, insult or contempt or infringement of woman’s or verbal and emotional abuse means insult, ridicule, abusing or economic abuse means economic or deprivation of financial resources, which she is entitled to, mentally disturbing, all these are called domestic violence.

Under this law, the scope of domestic violence includes many types of violence and abuse. Domestic violence is any behaviour, conduct or behaviour in any domestic relationship or relationship that (1) causes injury to your health, safety, life, or any organ, or (2) causes mental or physical harm.

Apart from this, in domestic relations or kinship,
➤ Physical abuse (such as beating, slapping, biting teeth, stumbling, kicking, etc.).
➤ Sexual abuse (such as rape or coercive sex, coercion to view pornography or material, sexual behaviour intended to humiliate, and sexual abuse of children).
➤ Verbal and emotional violence (such as humiliating, abusing, accusing character and conduct, harassing you when you are not having a boy, harassing you in the name of dowry, forcing you to quit or not work, not marrying your heart) giving or forcing marriage to a particular person, threatening suicide etc.)
➤ Economic violence (such as not giving you or your child money and resources to care for you, not allowing you to find your employment, or interrupting it, taking away your income, salary etc from you, kicking out of the house etc.) is also domestic violence.

The officers who are responsible for enforcing this act have certain duties under this law such as – when a police officer, protection officer, service provider or magistrate comes to know about the incident of domestic violence, they should inform the victim of the following rights :

➤ The victim may apply for any relief under this law such as protection order, pecuniary relief, temporary protection of children (custody order, residence order or compensation order).
➤ Victim can take help of official service providers.
➤ Victim can contact Protection Officer
➤ Victim can seek free legal aid
➤ Victim can also file criminal petition under Indian Penal Code (IPC). Under this, the defendant can be imprisoned for up to three years, under this the victim needs to prove serious abuse.

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