Supreme Court of India.
THE SUPREME Court has upheld a ruling that the Domestic Violence Act, intended to safeguard women against marital abuse, will apply even after divorce.
A three-judge bench headed by Justice Ranjan Gogoi on May 10 dismissed a petition challenging a 2013 Rajasthan High Court judgment, which had ruled to this effect.
The High Court also held that the Act would not apply only to marital relations, but the expression “domestic relations” was wide enough to include “consanguinity, marriage, a relationship in the nature of marriage, adoption or as family members living together as a joint family”.
The case pertained to an application under the Act filed before a Jodhpur magistrate court in 2007. The court dismissed it and this was upheld by the sessions court. On appeal, the High Court referred it to a division bench due to two conflicting decisions, with one of them saying the Act was applicable irrespective of whether the woman was divorced and the other saying it will not apply where marriage was dissolved prior to coming into force of the Act.
The High Court held that “a plain reading of the definition of ‘aggrieved person’ spells out that the intended beneficiary of the protection as provided for under the Act, is not only a woman who ‘is’ in domestic relationship with the respondent but also the woman who ‘has been’ in a domestic relationship with the respondent…”.