Domestic violence isn't only hitting
The 2005 Act deliberately defines abuse broadly, because control rarely looks like a single bruise. It covers physical, sexual, verbal, emotional and economic abuse, and it's the last two that most women don't realise are covered at all.
Physical: hitting, pushing, slapping, restraining, any act causing bodily harm or danger.
Sexual: any sexual conduct that abuses, humiliates or degrades, including forced acts within marriage.
Verbal & emotional: insults, humiliation about not having a child or a son, ridicule, constant threats, taunts about dowry.
Economic: withholding household money, taking your salary or jewellery, blocking you from working, throwing you out of the house.
Two more points people get wrong. First, a complaint isn't limited to a husband: it can be against him and relatives living in the shared household. Second, you don't have to be currently living there: a woman who has been driven out can still apply, and ask to be put back.
The five orders you can ask for
Protection orderRestrains further violence, and can bar the respondent from contacting you, entering your workplace or your child's school, or communicating through others. Breaching it is a criminal offence: this is what gives the order its teeth.
Residence orderThe most powerful and least-used remedy in Indian family law. It protects your right to live in the shared household even if the house is in your husband's or in-laws' name, restrains them from dispossessing you, and can require alternative accommodation to be provided.
Monetary reliefMaintenance for you and the children, loss of earnings, medical expenses, and losses caused by destruction of property. Frequently the fastest route to money actually reaching you. More on maintenance →
Custody orderTemporary custody of your children can be granted in the same proceeding, so you're not forced to run two separate cases at once. Custody →
Compensation orderFor the injuries caused, including mental torture and emotional distress: separate from maintenance.
Interim orders come first. You don't wait for the case to finish. Protection and residence relief is frequently granted at an early hearing, on affidavit, precisely because the whole point of the Act is immediate safety.
What to collect: quietly, starting now
Evidence in these cases is almost always built from ordinary things. Store it somewhere he can't reach: your own email account, a trusted relative's phone, a friend's house.
Medical records & prescriptions, with dates
Photographs of injuries and of damaged property
Threatening messages, WhatsApp chats, voice notes
Any police complaint or CSR copy, even an old one
Names of neighbours or relatives who witnessed incidents
Jewellery receipts and your stridhan list
Bank statements showing money being taken or withheld
A simple dated diary of incidents: it carries real weight
If you have none of this, apply anyway. Courts understand that women in abusive homes rarely have a neat file: your own detailed affidavit, a Protection Officer's report and a medical examination can carry a case.
If you've been accused and the allegations aren't true
We act on this side too, and we do it without contempt for either party. DV proceedings are sometimes filed tactically: to gain leverage in a divorce, to secure the house, or to pressure a family into a settlement. That doesn't mean genuine cases are rare; it means each case has to be looked at on its facts.
If you're the respondent: do not breach any interim order, even one you believe is unjust, breach is a criminal offence and it destroys your defence. Don't contact the complainant directly. Preserve your own messages and records rather than deleting them. And expect a related 498A complaint; the two often travel together and are best defended as one strategy.
