The Supreme Court has held that a woman will be entitled to seek relief against a husband under the Protection of Women from Domestic Violence Act 2005 even though the acts alleged occurred prior to the coming of the Act.
The decision of court came on an appeal filed by a Rajasthan resident Mohammad Tahib Ali against a judgment of the Jodhpur Bench of the Rajasthan High Court on October 30, 2013. The HC had upheld the wife’s complaint against the husband to be maintainable even though the torture she suffered at the hands of her husband related to a period before the Act came into operation on October 26, 2006.
The parties had entered into marital relationship on October 15, 2001 and for marital discord sustained between the parties. She was abandoned at her father’s place by the husband who allegedly tortured her leading to extreme physical and mental trauma. In 2007, after the 2005 Act was enacted, she filed a case before a Jodhpur court and the Magistrate admitted her petition.
looking into the facts of her case, the apex bench of Justices Ranjan Gogoi, R Banumathi and Navin Sinha said, “In the facts of the case we are not inclined to interfere. The Special leave petition (by Tahib Ali) is accordingly dismissed.” The lawyer for Ali, advocate Dushyant Parashar did make out a case that if the HC judgment is sustained, the 2005 Act will become a tool in the hands of wives to wreck vengeance and settle scores with husbands with whom they no longer live or have divorced.
But what weighed with the Court was a string of decisions in the past where the Supreme Court has held that the Act does not require a subsisting relationship between the husband and wife to be invoked. Moreover, the Rajasthan HC verdict gave elaborate reasons for allowing the wife’s plea. looking into the definition of domestic violence in the Act, it said violence has to be any act of physical, sexual, verbal, emotional abuse. While physical act is limited by time, emotional abuse or mental abuse is sustained. Also, it was noted that the 2005 Act extends to live-in relationship where a legal divorce can never occur.
The HC wondered what if the divorced husband continues to torture his former wife or decides to remove her from the shared household that she is entitled to under the Act. Moreover, the HC reasoned that the provisions contained in the 2005 Act are of remedial nature and is not a criminal action but necessarily civil action which provides monetary relief to the wife.
Even the definition of “aggrieved person” under the Act is defined as “any woman who is, or has been in a domestic relationship with the respondent” indicating that the act of violence does not require continuation of relationship.