Domestic violence application: protection, residence and money orders

If you are in immediate danger, call 112 (police) or 181 (the national women's helpline) first. Everything below can wait until you are safe.

What it is

A domestic violence application is a request to a Magistrate under Section 12 of the Protection of Women from Domestic Violence Act, 2005 for orders that protect a woman from abuse at home and support her and her children. It is not a criminal prosecution of the abuser. Its purpose is to stop the violence, keep a roof over your head and give you the money you need.

Some terms the Act uses:

• Aggrieved person — the woman who applies.
• Respondent — the person the application is against, such as a husband or partner, and in some cases his relatives.
• Shared household — the home where you live or have lived in a domestic relationship, whether owned or rented, and whoever holds the title.
• Protection Officer — an officer appointed by the state government in each district to help women use this Act, as far as possible a woman (Section 8).
• Service provider — an organisation registered with the state to help women under this Act, for example with legal aid, medical help or shelter (Section 10).

When it applies

The Act applies when two things are true.

You are, or were, in a domestic relationship with the respondent. That means you live or have lived together in a shared household as relatives by blood, by marriage, through a relationship in the nature of marriage, by adoption, or as members of a joint family (Section 2). A wife, a woman in a live-in relationship, a mother, a sister or a widow living in the family home can all fall within it.

You have faced domestic violence. Section 3 defines it widely:

• Physical abuse — hurting you or putting your life, limb or health in danger, including assault and threats.
• Sexual abuse — any conduct of a sexual nature that abuses, humiliates or degrades you.
• Verbal and emotional abuse — insults, ridicule, humiliation, name-calling, including about not having a child or a son, and repeated threats to hurt someone you care about.
• Economic abuse — taking away money, stridhan or property you are entitled to, selling household things you need, or stopping you from using your home.
• Dowry harassment — harassing you or your relatives to meet a demand for dowry or property.

The orders the Magistrate can make

• Protection order (Section 18) — forbids the respondent from committing violence, contacting you in any form, coming to your workplace or your child's school, selling or using joint assets or bank lockers, or harming people who help you.
• Residence order (Section 19) — stops anyone from putting you out of the shared household, orders the respondent to leave it, keeps him or his relatives away from the part you live in, or makes him provide similar accommodation or pay its rent. The section does not allow an order removing a woman from the household. The Magistrate can also order your stridhan and other property returned to you.
• Monetary relief (Section 20) — money for loss of earnings, medical expenses, damaged or removed property, and maintenance for you and your children, which can be in addition to any other maintenance order. If it is not paid, the Magistrate can direct the respondent's employer to pay you directly from his wages.
• Custody order (Section 21) — temporary custody of your children, with visits by the respondent only if they are not harmful to the children.
• Compensation order (Section 22) — compensation for injuries, including mental torture and emotional distress.

The same orders can also be asked for in another case already going on between you and the respondent, such as a divorce or maintenance case (Section 26).

The steps and the timeline

1. Get safe and get help. Any police officer, Protection Officer, service provider or Magistrate who receives a complaint of domestic violence must tell you about your right to apply for these orders, about the Protection Officers and service providers, and about your right to free legal services (Section 5). In an emergency, the Protection Officer or service provider must seek the police's help and record what happened without delay (Rules, Rule 9).

2. The domestic incident report. A Protection Officer, or a service provider if you ask, records what happened in a domestic incident report (Form I) and sends it to the Magistrate and the local police station (Rules, Rule 5). The Magistrate must consider it before passing orders (Section 12).

3. The application. You, a Protection Officer, or someone else on your behalf files the application before the Magistrate (Section 12). It is made in Form II under the Rules (Rule 6), and the Protection Officer can help you prepare it and read it to you if you cannot read. File where you live (even temporarily) or work, where the respondent lives or works, or where the violence happened (Section 27).

4. Urgent orders. If the application shows violence has happened or is likely, the Magistrate can pass an ex parte order — an order made before the respondent is heard — on your affidavit in Form III (Section 23; Rule 6). This is how urgent protection and residence orders are obtained.

5. First hearing. The Magistrate fixes the first hearing, which should ordinarily be within three days of the court receiving the application (Section 12(4)). Notice goes to the respondent.

6. Hearings and final orders. Both sides are heard. The Magistrate should try to decide the application within sixty days of the first hearing (Section 12(5)). The Magistrate can direct the police to protect you and to help carry out the orders (Section 19).

7. Appeal. Either side can appeal to the Court of Session within thirty days of the order being served (Section 29).

8. If the order is broken. Report it. Breaking a protection order is an offence (Section 31), and the police can arrest without a warrant (Section 32).

Documents needed

You do not need every paper to start. Keep copies somewhere safe outside the home if you can — with someone you trust, or in an email to yourself.

• Proof of the relationship: a marriage certificate, wedding photographs, or anything showing you lived together.
• Proof of the shared household: the address, a rent agreement, utility bills, ration card.
• A written account of the incidents, with dates, as best you remember them.
• Medical records, photographs of injuries, and any police complaint or report.
• Messages, emails, call records or recordings of threats.
• Names of people who saw or heard what happened.
• Details of your stridhan and belongings, and of the respondent's income, job and assets, for monetary relief.
• Your children's names, ages and school details.

Typical cost

The Act gives you a right to free legal services (Section 5), and the Protection Officer must make sure you get legal aid and must give you the complaint form free (Section 9). If you choose a private advocate, the cost varies with the court, the orders sought and the number of hearings, and the advocate quotes their own fee before you pay anything; eMunshi does not set it.

What the advocate does

• Listens to what happened and tells you which orders to ask for.
• Drafts the application and the affidavit for urgent orders, and files them in the right court.
• Works with the Protection Officer's domestic incident report.
• Appears for you at the hearings and answers the respondent's case.
• Advises you on related steps: a police complaint, a maintenance claim, custody, or divorce. This Act adds to your other rights; it does not take any away (Section 36).

The self-serve document that comes before it

No self-serve document is needed before a domestic violence application. If you also want to report a criminal offence to the police — for example cruelty by a husband or his relatives, which is an offence under Section 85 of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita, 2023 — a written police complaint can be prepared at ₹299. For advice before you decide anything, a 30-minute call with an independent advocate from our panel starts at ₹999; talk to an advocate. For support during a divorce or separation, see Maintenance.