SC changes law to give women right to sue daughter-in-law

NEW DELHI: A woman can now seek legal action against her daughter-in-law and her minor grandchildren for domestic violence after the Supreme Court made changes to

NEW DELHI: A woman can now seek legal action against her daughter-in-law and her minor grandchildren for domestic violence after the Supreme Court made changes to a law that was seen as biased in favour of the daughter-in-law.

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The court’s decision to strike down a provision in the domestic violence act that restricted the definition of accused to “adult male” puts a daughter-in-law and other women members of a family at equal footing.

“It is not difficult to conceive of a non-adult 16 or 17-year-old member of a household who can aid or abet the commission of acts of domestic violence,” a bench of justice Kurien Joseph and justice Rohinton Nariman said.

Earlier, the daughter-in-law was the only woman who could sue her husband and all his woman relatives, including his mother, sisters and even nieces. But a domestic violence complaint couldn’t be filed against the daughter-in-law as the accused under the law could only be adult males. There have been growing complaints about the abuse of the law at the hands of daughters-in-law to put pressure on her husband, especially in seeking a hefty divorce settlement.

The domestic violence act came into force in 2005 to protect women from physical, sexual, verbal, emotional and economic abuse at home. The law was primarily brought in to ensure safety of a woman against dowry harassment and other such abuses at the hands of her husband or in-laws.

A breach of the order can land a violator in jail for a year. The court also can prevent the accused from selling his house or businesses or both to ensure the victim was not left to fend for herself.

The benefit, however, was not available to a woman if her daughter-in-law threw her out. The court’s decision fixes the anomaly.

The court said “adult male” was not only an offending expression but also rejected the popular belief that juveniles couldn’t harass the elders in the family, rejecting a woman’s challenge to a Bombay high court order that daughter-in-laws, too, could be tried for domestic violence.

Senior advocate Meenakshi Arora, who argued for the mother-in-law in the apex court, said the order had wider ramifications. “Technically, now even a daughter can take her mother to court,” she explained.

“In the case of a wife complaining of domestic violence, the husband’s relatives including mother-in-law and sister-in-law can be arrayed as respondents (accused) and effective orders passed against them. But in the case of a mother-in-law or sister-in-law who is an aggrieved person, the respondent can only be an “adult male person,” the bench said.

The court gave multiple examples to drive home the point that the law was not providing equal protection to other women of the household.

The expression “adult male” ruled out a mother-in-law from seeking compensation from a daughter-in-law even if she faced violence at her hands, the court said. But, the daughter-in-law, being a wife, was entitled to monetary relief.