A Critical Analysis of Domestic Violence Laws for Protection of Women: Evolving Jurisprudence

Abstract

The Protection of Women from Domestic Violence Act, 2005 (PWDVA) represented a radical departure from the earlier Indian model, which mainly addressed the notion of home-based violence through penal cruelty, dowry and maintenance provisions.[i] It recast domestic violence as a question of rights involving bodily integrity, residence, dignity, economic autonomy and access to immediate civil relief.[ii] But the law’s transformative potential has relied less on legislative language alone and more on those who interpret it.[iii] This paper attempts a critical appraisal of the changing jurisprudence on domestic violence laws for protection of women, primarily examining the PWDVA and placing it in the larger context with criminal law provisions on cruelty, maintenance law, constitutional guarantees as well as international standards.[iv] It claims that Indian courts have slowly and steadily transitioned from a restrictive, incident-cumulative understanding of abuse to a relatively more expansive grasp, which includes coercive control, economic deprivation, continuing wrongs and residential vulnerability.[v] But the jurisprudence is uneven. Certain judgments expanded access to justice by widening the scope of respondent, common household and domestic relationship; others contracted protection through property centred reasoning, respectability filters in cases of live-in relationships or over-caution against misuse. By engaging with over forty academic publications and thirty court cases, the paper compares different lines in the literature: rights-based feminist narratives, implementation-focused socio-legal critiques and doctrinal approaches defending judicial restraint. It concludes that the trajectory of domestic violence jurisprudence in India is substantial but remains incomplete. If the promise of the PWDVA is to translate from symbolic advance to effective protection, then the next phase of reform must focus on doctrinal clarity, survivor-centred procedure, and serious investment in implementation institutions