ON OCTOBER 19, 2025, The Leaflet kickstarted a special year-long series commemorating the 20th anniversary of the Protection of Women from Domestic Violence Act, 2005 (‘PWDVA’). The aim of publishing a special piece a month, leading up to October 26, 2026, the date on which the Indian government issued a notification to bring it into force, is, as I noted previously, to create a “living archive” of the law, its history, its present and the future it demands.
This month, we have a special gathering where I sat down with three individuals: Senior Advocate Sanjoy Ghose, who as an associate of the Women’s Rights Initiative, and Nilima Dutta, who as a trustee of the Lawyers Collective were involved in the drafting of the law, and advocate on record Ravindra S. Garia, who, in later years, played a critical role in framing the Rules as a legal aid officer.
Asmita Basu: What was your involvement with the Lawyers Collective? Sanjoy, you were there when the law was being conceptualised, and the Women’s Rights Initiative (‘WRI’) was also being established.
Sanjoy Ghose: When I started working with Ms. Jaising, I realised that she actually wore two hats. She was the senior advocate who did her professional cases, and she also was very, very actively involved in the social movement, and especially for empowerment of women.
So, we would always have seminars on such issues. I helped Ms. Jaising prepare a paper for an International Bar Association conference. The Supreme Court was coming out with a book on women's empowerment.
Mr. Anand Grove was also actively involved in the HIV-AIDS movement. Slowly, things were working out. Slowly, this was taking the shape of a funded NGO to do HIV-AIDS intervention programs.
And that’s when Nilima Dutta put a thought in Ms Jaising's mind. Ms Jaising used to go to Bombay pretty frequently, and one day when she came back, she was all enthusiastic and bubbly, and said, ‘You know what? Here is a draft (the framework on model legislation on domestic violence), and we have to draft this law on protection of women from domestic violence'.
And, the first thought I had when I saw the law was that the concept of domestic violence sounded so European…non-Indian, in a sense. At that time I thought it would be very impractical. Today, I laugh about it.
Soon, we had the National Colloquium in the Habitat Centre which started off the campaign, and later we decided to replicate that in every state.
And the first one was in Bengal at the Ramkrishna Mission Cultural Centre.
Asmita Basu: Thanks, Sanjoy. Nilima, would you want to go? At that time, you were a Trustee of the Lawyers Collective. Where did the story start with you?
Nilima Dutta: I think we registered the Lawyers Collective as a trust in 1981.
And we were already working. Indira had a public meeting, and there were women's activist groups like Forum Against Rape, and a lot of other NGOs, which were primarily working on sexual violence, and issues surrounding rape - like how the offence of rape had been construed by the Supreme Court, or the Mathura rape case judgement. That work became the pivot for everybody to get together and discuss things.
I actually started my legal practice in 1987, although I had already become a founder and member of Lawyers Collective and already working on the things. When I joined Ms. Jaising as her assistant, she used to have a massive number of women from all economic classes coming to the office. And they were mainly women who were married and were subjected to all kinds of violence, ranging from economic to physical and sexual.
And those days, the only remedy we had was against marital partners. At the most, if they were in a live-in relationship, you could get a protective order directing that the [abusing partner] not come within so many feet, etc. We had some sympathetic district judges in Bombay who would give protective orders not to be dispossessed, or physically assaulted, but they were very reluctant to give us any ouster injunctions.
And they would say, you know: ‘He has a right, how can you put him out of his own house?’. So, we used to argue that he should not enter this room, or that one portion [of the house], one room would protect the woman. But that was ridiculous because there was really no protection from such orders - in Mumbai, houses are pretty small. You live in a room, you have to share the bathroom, the kitchen, and so on.
Even women living in posh Mumbai localities had the same problem. The violence would occur whenever there was any sort of inclusion in the common space.
Ms. Jaising used to be very up-to-date on jurisprudence coming from other jurisdictions, so in our discussions, I brought up the idea that we should start working towards a comprehensive legislation. So that was how the seeds were planted.
But a lot of the actual work started from 1998 onwards as we started researching and studying other areas more.
Asmita Basu: Thanks, Nilima. Ravi, you came much later. I remember you joining the Legal Aid Clinic of the WRI, and then you got caught up in the Rule drafting process, which was after the law was enacted. So, just to take us back to those times. What was happening there, and how did you get involved?
Ravindra S. Garia: I remember joining Lawyers Collective in 2004. In Law Faculty, where I studied, we had teachers who emphasised on equality being the foundation of any kind of legal system. There was also special emphasis on the Kiranjit Ahluwalia case.
After 2002, we saw that many judgments were coming from the courts which said that Section 498A was being abused. When I joined Lawyers Collective as a legal officer in the WRI, I got a chance to put into practice what I had learned in law school. Then, one winter, when I was about to leave for vacation for fifteen days, I was assigned the work of getting the Rules in place. Initially, I was a bit perplexed - I didn’t know what to do. But soon, I realised there’s no second thoughts to have here - this is a problem women across the world have been facing and trying to deal with. I decided to look at other jurisdictions to understand how the issue was being dealt with there and thankfully, there were some protocols.
From the beginning, however, I had apprehensions about how the law would be enforced. I have always seen law as a means of upholding the status quo. And here was a law trying to put women, at least in the domestic space, on an equal footing. How could that be done? So I had serious concerns in the back of my mind that there would not be enough budgetary support.
Asmita Basu: Ultimately, the law was not just written by the lawyers. You were also getting a lot of input from others through the Colloquiums and consultations, and those voices found their place in the law. Who were the actors at that point of time? What were the kind of demands that were articulated to you, which made its way into the law?
Sanjoy Ghose: At that time, there was already a Mohini Giri-drafted version of a rudimentary law [which she made while she was the chairperson of the National Commission for Women], dealing with domestic violence. It needed a lot of customisation to the Indian context.
Assisting Ms. Jaising were all young lawyers like us, who were not seasoned lobbyists. There was no way I thought that in a matter of years, the entire national mood would change and Lawyers Collective would be able to get a national consensus on having a law for domestic violence passed in Parliament.
At that time we were just watching the jigsaw pieces. But Ms Jaising was very clear - she wanted a colloquium to be there, even though not all of us were convinced with the idea of a colloquium to bring together judges. Ms. Jaising believed that first you have to create a climate for the law, and before that, you have to get the stakeholders on board. I remember that shortly prior to the National Colloquium, the then CJI A.S. Anand had made up his mind to boycott the event because of a satirical piece written about him by Ms. Jaising. Ms. Jaising ensured to visit CJI Anand’s office to iron things out with him, and even wrote a letter addressed to all 23-odd judges of the Supreme Court. This was a last minute crisis that was swiftly dealt with. A lot was at stake - a lot of judges were involved, civil society was involved, people like Satya Rani Chadha, NGOs in Calcutta, people like Anuradha Kapoor, who I met at that conference for the first time, Justice Ruma Pal, who was then a judge of the Calcutta HC, and Justice A.P. Shah from the Bombay HC were all involved.
But with all things sorted, the campaign started with a bang. The press covered it and suddenly everyone was talking about domestic violence.
Asmita Basu: Nilima, were you also part of that Colloquium?
Nilima Dutta: No, I was already out of the country by January 1999. But in 1998, I had written an article called ‘Domestic Violence: Tolerating the Intolerable?’, where I argued that we need a substantive dedicated civil law to address domestic violence. It analysed how the criminal law was failing us. I analysed the Supreme Court’s judgments on Section 498A and established how it was markedly deficient in addressing domestic violence, especially on the issue of how the survivors financially maintain themselves.
Marriage is like a career, with an economic element to it. The man can decide to withhold or just stop maintaining the family. I have even had some women clients tell me that as long as the children are being fed or their school fees are being paid, they are fine with tolerating some level of domestic violence.
I came into the picture at a later stage and I finally gave in some inputs when the final draft was done. The law provides for Protection Officers, but they are not trained to give any legal assistance to litigants, only filling up requisite forms.
Asmita Basu: The whole idea of the Protection Officer was a major innovation. Where did the ideas in the law come from? For instance, Nilima, the idea of Protection Officers, for instance, I think was already in place in Australia?
Nilima Dutta: In Australia, there is no standalone domestic violence statute - it was contained within the Crimes Act. But that law was amended to empower police officers, whenever they received a complaint of domestic violence, to call the magistrate and get a telephonic restraining order against the perpetrator. They got powers to basically arrest the person and just keep them in detention, or remove them from the shared household.
That kind of power, we did not give to the Indian police under the PWDVA. So Protection Officers came in since we needed somebody who's independent, has the powers, will have an agency to act and basically be an advocate for the woman who can't speak or help herself (Protection Officers were not vested with investigative duties unless with an order from the Court).
Unfortunately, it has suffered from a lack of funding, and apathy. Some states have been more proactive with their Protection Officers. Some have forced double duty on our existing government employees who already have their own portfolio to manage.
In Mumbai, some of them are not even working two days a week. They're sharing duties such as election duties and being made to do all sorts of things. So, they're not trained, not paid for it. They have not been given the capacity or capability to act.
Asmita Basu: Thanks, Nilima, but then I think there was some amount of pushback from the women's movement as well on how much police power you would allow in your houses if you were going to empower the police. So that was a tough balance to achieve in those circumstances.
Nilima Dutta: Correct. Yes.
Asmita Basu: Sanjoy, where were those ideas coming from?
Sanjoy Ghose: Let me just discuss two issues which we were very apprehensive about, and which actually turned out to be game-changers.
The issue of ‘Relationships in the nature of marriage’
We were very, very apprehensive that the right wing would be very upset that we are trying to introduce ‘live-in’ relationships.
The fact of the matter is that there are so many people who are in live-in relationships without even knowing they're living in. In South India, many women were fooled into believing that they are legally married. And when they would come to assert their rights, they would simply be told that: ‘Uh, oh, you're not married.’
So, other than the conscious living-in people, who also we wanted to protect, there were people who were not even aware, or women who were tricked into a second marriage thinking it's a legitimate marriage. So that's how the phrase ‘living in a relationship in the nature of marriage’ was brought in.
We were very apprehensive whether the Parliament would pass that through, and it actually passed through.
The issue of ‘Right of Residence’
The second was the ‘right of residence’. Judges were willing to give restraining orders against violence, orders on child custody etc. Those were easy and cheap for the State. But when it came to property for women, that was a problem. In a lot of consultations, Ms. Jaising had to jurisprudentially explain that this is not exactly a right to property, as you understand in the traditional sense. It is only a right of residence.
Later at the time of lobbying also, I suggested that we tell the ministers that the law was not on property, but on violence. How could any politician support violence? Ultimately, that was the line which won, because we said that anyone who stands up and opposes the bill is someone who believes women should be treated violently at home.
While working on the law, we took inspiration from the Violence Against Women Act in America. One of the important clauses of that law was that it mandated the government to fund the implementation of the law every year. The Ministry chopped that provision off because they didn’t want to get funding done.
The other thing we were inspired by that law was that there was an obligation to disseminate information about this law. It was a challenge to get a provision like that into India because we follow the British principle that ‘ignorance of law is no excuse’. But this was such an important provision because so many women would not even be aware that they have these rights, that domestic violence can include nutritional violence and nitty gritties like that.
Asmita Basu: Thanks so much, Sanjoy. Ravi, one of the promises of the law was that it would be a mixture of a civil and a criminal law. So, while you are talking about a civil injunction, whether it's a protection order or even a maintenance order, you are still activating the Magistrates Court, which is the criminal court.
How did you get this mix of procedures, and what were the challenges in doing that?
Ravindra S. Garia: We had a precedent of a kind in terms of Section 125 of CrPC: the provision for maintenance being administered by the Magistrates Courts. We already had provisions in the CrPC, where the administrative magistrates - SDMs, and ADMs - are also empowered to make civil orders under the CrPC. So, it's not that it was a completely new thing. So, taking the cue from Section 125 of the CrPC for the sake of efficacy, everybody agreed that the magistrate's court would be much better in terms of getting these provisions implemented.
Further, the violation of a protection order, once granted, was recognized as an offense in the PWDVA. So, it would be very difficult to go from one court to another court, or to have a civil court make a complaint to a magistrate's court.
Rather, it was simpler if it was kept within the jurisdiction of the magistrate's court. And further, the magistrate did not have to penalize anybody. The magistrate did not have to send anybody to jail, unless it was an offense, and the offense was a violation of protection orders.
The importance of the protection orders, I feel, has been watered down in the course of PWDVA’s implementation. For instance, there was a provision that the Protection Officer could inform the magistrate concerned [Domestic Incident Reports (‘DIRs’) filed with Protection Officers have to be sent to the Magistrate, whether the aggrieved woman goes to court or not] and keep a log of conversation with the magistrate.
If an emergency order was required, the magistrate could receive a complaint on the telephone, and it would be treated as a valid complaint to assist the police. Today you cannot imagine that when a woman is in a dire emergency, the Protection Officer immediately takes her complaint and rushes to the Magistrate. Forget about the dead of the night, it wouldn’t happen even after 4:30 PM when the magistrate gets up from court. So the PWDVA’s ability to protect women in situations of dire emergency has been completely watered down.
As far as the Protection Officer is concerned, as Nilima correctly said, it is usually a revenue official, or a school teacher or an employee of the Child and Welfare Department doing several other duties. All they do is fill up the Domestic Incident Report which they then submit before the Court. The intention behind the provision was that when a Protection Officer receives a complaint from the woman, they visit the space, understand the seriousness and make recommendations to the magistrate and get an order before things worsen. That’s not happening at all.
Today, we are not even seeing aggrieved women going to the Protection Officer at all. They approach a lawyer, the lawyer drafts a complaint under the DV Act which is filed before the Court and then the Protection Officer is intimated, who taking cue from the complaint, fills up the form and submit it before the Court.
The only significance of the PWDVA, practically, today, is that women who are in a ‘relationship in the nature of marriage’ can also avail benefits like Section 125 of CrPC. That’s all there is to it now. When it comes to the law against domestic violence, there was a start in a certain direction and there is an opportunity for us to talk about what more needs to be done.
Asmita Basu: A lot of the demands coming from feminist spaces and women’s centres providing support to women translated into the law. Sanjoy, what were the aspirations from the feminist spaces? And where are we now on those aspirations?
Sanjoy Ghose: Before that, just let me take one minute to discuss the issue of Protection Officers. Here, unlike the beneficiaries of other legislations, in case of the PWDVA, the beneficiary is so vulnerable that she cannot access the law and the justice system without an intermediary, which was to be the Protection Officer.
Now imagine, if in the entire city of Delhi, you have only 30 Protection Officers, and as Ravi pointed out, they also have additional duties apart from filling up forms and attending court, it is virtually impossible that the role we imagined for them - that every mohalla will have one Protection Officer who will have all the women and service providers on WhatsApp, and will be able to give her a contact, take her to a short stay home, file a report, give her the protection required, talk to a training agency to give her skill-building training or employment, and give her a way out the violent situation - will be fulfilled. In fact, case laws show (and Ravi has done so many of them) that the Protection Officer today can become an obstruction.
Now coming to the challenges we faced: shockingly, during one of our consultations, one lady who was brought by Satya Rani Chadha told us that in Patiala House Court, a lady Magistrate or district judge told her: ‘You know, we are ourselves slapped in our house by our husband. Getting two-three slaps in the house is not a big deal - why are you coming to Court?’. So we were clear that we were dealing with a situation where we cannot leave it to the courts to interpret what domestic violence means.
So one of the things we did was to provide a very broad definition of domestic violence. I was so happy that this broad framing was not chipped away by either the Ministry of Law and Justice, or face any objection from any member of Parliament. We were able to add aspects such as economic violence, psychological violence, emotional violene and sexual violence as a part of domestic violence, which I think was so ahead of its time, and that was an output of the consultations.
One lawyer during the consultations, who later became a judge of a High Court and an ally of the women’s movement, apprehended that our definition was too broad. ‘Tomorrow, if I affectionately call my wife fat, she might file a case against me!’ he said. We explained to him about the barriers that exist in accessing law - women were not so frivolous that they, upon being offended by a joke, would go to the courts where justice is such a difficult venture. So during the consultations, it was a challenge to justify this broad definition even to those who sympathised with the cause.
The other challenge was explaining to them the context, and Ms. Jaising set out that context. At that time, survivors had only two options: either they file for a divorce, or take criminal action under Section 498A. Ending the marriage or sending the bread earner to jail was not always a practical solution: many women who were in vulnerable situations wanted to be rescued from the violence, and have a space where they could be protected from the violence, and while recuperating, take a decision on what legal remedy they want to take.
We went to countless consultations, from Delhi and Punjab all the way to Calcutta, Tamil Nadu, Goa and Bombay.
We even engaged with men and those involved in the men’s rights movement to convince them of the law. We told them that the reason women file criminal cases and then withdraw those cases (not because they are false) is because that is the only way they can get the husband to listen and settle and receive some protection. Now if this law comes, there was a suspended warrant hanging on them that if you don’t follow this protection order or maintenance order, there would be a criminal offense. It was a mid-way approach.
Asmita Basu: Thanks, Sanjoy. Jurisprudentially, earlier the women’s movement had pushed for a criminal law that protected women against domestic violence, but with the PWDVA, the conversation was changing and there was an emerging focus on the civil law remedy also, in the form of injunctive relief. Ravi, what has been your experience in this regard? Are you seeing Section 498A cases going down and a corresponding rise of cases under the PWDVA?
Ravindra S. Garia: I don’t have the exact statistics, but I don’t believe that Section 498A cases are going down. There are a lot of 498A cases as of now as well.
I don’t see it as a tactical move that it had to be a civil law and the criminal law would kick in only when there was a violation of a civil (order) law. As Sanjoy pointed out, there was a need for it - many of the women WRI worked with weren’t against the institution of marriage itself. They wanted to preserve their family with their husband and children with dignity, without being subjected to violence.
So this law, in fact, gave the women an opportunity where they could raise the grievance, tell the family or the in-laws that you cannot continue to treat me like this, and also have a space where things could get back to normal.
This approach helped obtain approval on the law from a large section of society.
However, later faced with budgetary constraints, the law was not correctly enforced. If within society, the issue of protection of women within the confines of their household is seen as a priority, I do believe that the budgetary allocation, and the provision of infrastructure required to realise the law will also be prioritised.
Asmita Basu: There's only one point of deviance I have with what you said. I don't think the law was articulated as one that preserves families, but more towards realising a woman’s right to a safe home, whether in a marital relationship or not. Are there any other issues beyond budgetary constraints that need to be worked upon? Have issues like natal violence been covered adequately?
Ravindra S. Garia: I would only want, as Sanjoy said, that even if not in neighbourhoods, even at the level of blocks, one Protection Officer should be available. And there should be a separate Directorate of Protection Officers, like how we have a Directorate of Prosecutors overlooking protection. There should be separate recruitment, and it should be treated as a specialized job.
In fact, they should have their own infrastructure, own vehicles, own offices, and supporting staff. Unless that is done, and the idea that Protection Officers are duty bound to this job is established, it would be very difficult.
Nilima Dutta: Strengthening-wise basically, I feel that the service provider’s role has not been strong. The concept of refuge homes has not been implemented. Emergency homes do not exist, except for standard government ones where people are generally just sent if they’re picked up normally by the police or some social worker.
So that hasn't worked.
I think that the legislation should give power to the magistrate to provide alternative accommodation to the woman. Especially in metropolises like Mumbai, where rents are so high, protection is a very tenuous issue. Women survivors may take a rental home on a leave-and-license and they may not be able to to pay the license fees. The woman then is left in a very vulnerable place, at the mercy of the landlord. So I feel that alternative accommodation should be something that is implemented through the law.
Further, I do see that at least in Mumbai, the magistrates are far more receptive of the law - they keep aside two days in the week, the afternoons, for domestic violence cases because they know they have to invest a lot of time listening to the stories. Generally, they never deny maintenance, especially for the children’s education. I would support that this happens across the country.
One more thing I would say is that the strength is in the rule.
Under the PWDVA, the respondent has to be served the order at some point of time, even if you have got an ex-parte, ad-interim or a protective order. I get a lot of objections in court that the notice should not be served at the place of work, and that may be defaming the man, and I happily pull out the rule and I argue that the woman is not stigmatizing you, and there’s a rule, a provision for it.
That’s a strength of the law. And hats off to Ms Jaising for bringing the law to fruition and as Sanjoy said, having the passion to make sure it moved forward. And of course, to all the consultative groups who gave their wholehearted support. But like every law, I think, it should evolve to some extent. It can’t stay static.
Sanjoy Ghose: Let me start by talking about changes which we may not look forward to.
There has been a crying demand from the beginning that the law should not be sex-specific and it should be gender neutral. We were very clear in saying that we don’t believe that a husband may not be subject to domestic violence. But you have other laws to take care of that. You don’t need this specific law for the husband, because there is a power dynamic involved. There have also been instances where same-sex couples (for instance, a lesbian couple) have demanded that the law should apply to them too. There also, we were very clear that the person aggrieved has to be a woman, and the respondent cannot be a woman, but a man. These are issues which will keep coming up but I don’t feel we have moved to that level even after so many years to make the law gender-neutral or allow this kind of dilution.
The other issue is about whether Section 498A cases have reduced. If you have noticed, the entire jurisprudence in the country has moved to such an extent that courts themselves, including the Supreme Court and High Courts are actually saying that 498A is being misused. We don’t know what data they are relying on but that’s what they are concluding. Maybe it is a conclusion on their own individual experiences in dealing with these cases in court. Many administrative and judicial fetters have been put in place in registering 498A cases. Maybe that is the reason why there is a slump in these cases.
Coming back to what Ravi said - you have to put money where your word is. Nilima raised the important point: where are these shelters, these skill centres for marginalised women or women facing violence? Especially in the last 11 years, I have seen a shrinking of fiscal investment towards any kind of socio-economic development. States like Uttar Pradesh and Maharashtra are closing down public schools. Today, could we expect that when they are shutting down schools, they would build shelters for women facing violence? That would be like living in a fool’s paradise.
We don’t know how to deal with these challenges. But one thing the law has done is it has raised consciousness about what is violence - what is acceptable, what is not acceptable. The issue of financial constraints will remain no matter what regime comes in. Our civil society and government needs to be more creative.
All the government has to do is give some kind of rebate. In Maharashtra, there is Transferable Development Rights (‘TDR’). When you are making relocation shelters, for instance, after removing people from, say, jhuggis in Dharavi, you give them some rebated municipal taxes. So you can allot two or three flats as temporary stays for women facing violence. You don’t have to spend any money on that. However, that out of the box thinking is absent.
The women’s movement has also gone silent in terms of putting pressure on the government. The movement has to work with civil society and corporates to get this done. But that conversation is in cold storage today.
Asmita Basu: Thank you so much. Previously, the government was open to taking inputs from civil societies but it is no longer the case, especially when it comes to laws like the Uniform Civil Code (‘UCC’). In these circumstances, how can the jurisprudence under the PWDVA influence future law making?
Ravindra S. Garia: I would like there to be an effort to move the actual and effective implementation of the domestic violence law a bit higher in the priorities of civil society movement and governments. That's very much possible. I'm saying the implementation may or may not be possible, achieving it may or may not be possible. But for this to move up in our priority list of demands is very much possible, which we can start right away.
Nilima Dutta: See, I come from the generation where we only got anything by doing dharnas, by protests, by writing letters, and sort of basically by trying to be heard and by finding very empathetic MPs who would lobby for us. I think both the PWDVA and the HIV-AIDS Act have only come because of the mass push behind it, and having MPs who really were helping us to support it through.
I am very pessimistic that those kinds of approaches would work today. We can't even find a party which has consensus on many things. So, again, we are relying on individual MPs saying, this is what we want, or nationwide people coming together or petitioning. I can't think of anything else which will really make us heard in that sense today.
As for 498A, I don’t encourage my clients to rely on it. 498A was very restrictive to marital cruelty. Cases where a sister is being ill treated by the brother in the home, or a mother is getting subjected to domestic violence, I always suggest to use the PWDVA since it is a substantive law, and the magistrate has to protect you in some way. If not at the magisterial level, the Sessions Court will grant you relief. But in 498A, unless there is an imminent danger to the woman, and the only way to get protection is to get an FIR registered within the first 24 hours, it is not useful. It does not even cover live-in relationships.
So that's where I stand. I wish I could see a brighter, faster way of moving for progressive law reform, but I don't.
Asmita Basu: I think there was a lot of progress made, and maybe it's now time to consolidate as well.