DOMESTIC VOLIENCE LAWS IN INDIA:

Domestic violence in India includes any form of violence suffered by a person from a biological relative, but typically is the violence suffered by a woman by male members of her family or relatives. There are various laws are made inorder to prevent domestic voilence or safeguard the victimeof the domestic voilence.

There are several domestic violence laws in India. The earliest law was the Dowry Prohibition Act 1961 which made the act of giving and receiving dowry a crime. In an effort to bolster the 1961 law, two new sections, Section 498A and Section 304B were introduced into the Indian Penal Code in 1983 and 1986. The most recent legislation is the Protection of Women from Domestic Violence Act (PWDVA) 2005. The PWDVA, a civil law, includes physical, emotional, sexual, verbal, and economic abuse as domestic violence.

Definition and law:

1. Domestic violence is currently defined in India by the Protection of Women from Domestic Violence Act of 2005. According to Section 3 of the Act, “any act, omission or commission or conduct of the respondent shall constitute domestic violence in case it. First, it gives a specific definition of domestic violence: actual or threats of physical, mental, emotional, sexual, or verbal abuse, as well as harassment regarding dowry or property. Women are given the right to seek protection against such acts, and their relatives can file a complaint for them against husbands who break the law. Second, a woman’s right to reside in their “matrimonial household” is clearly recognized. She cannot be evicted from it as she rightfully shares it with her husband.

2. harms or injures or endangers the health, safety, life, limb or well-being, whether mental or physical, of the aggrieved person or tends to do so and includes causing physical abuse, sexual abuse, verbal and emotional abuse and economic abuse; or

3. harasses, harms, injures or endangers the aggrieved person with a view to coerce her or any other person related to her to meet any unlawful demand for any dowry or other property or valuable security; or

4. has the effect of threatening the aggrieved person or any person related to her by any conduct mentioned in clause (a) or clause (b); or

otherwise injures or causes harm, whether physical or mental, to the aggrieved person.”

5. In 2005 it was made illegal Jammu and Kashmir, which has its own laws, has enacted in 2010 the Jammu and Kashmir Protection of Women from Domestic Violence Act, 2010.

A special section, numbered 498-A, that officially made domestic violence a criminal offense was added to the Indian Penal Code in 1983. This section of the law specifically covers cruelty towards married women by their husbands or their husbands’ families. Under the policy, acts of cruelty include, but are not limited to, the following:

physical abuse;

mental torture through threats to her or her loved ones (such as children);

denying the woman food;

locking her in or out of the house as punishment; and

demanding perverse sexual acts against the woman’s will.

There are various practices are dine inorder to stop domestic voilence. Large scale campaigns are being run, inorder to stop domestic voilence. Government is also trying its level best to change the orthodox practices but as a responsible citizen of the country we have to bring change in our own mind which is most important.