Aggrieved Person under Section 2(a) of the Domestic Violence Act, 2005: Who Can Seek Protection

Every application under the Domestic Violence Act begins with one question: is the applicant an aggrieved person? If she is not, no relief can follow, however serious the violence. Section 2(a) answers the question in a single sentence, but that sentence has been examined by the Supreme Court in a series of important cases dealing with divorced wives, widows, live-in partners, women who left the shared household and violence before the Act came into force. This note explains who is, and who is not, an aggrieved person, and how far back in time the protection reaches.

1. Meaning of Aggrieved Person

The definition contains three ingredients, all of which must be present:

1. A woman: only a woman can be an aggrieved person. A man cannot apply under the Act, though after Hiral P. Harsora (2016) a woman may be a respondent.
2. A present or past domestic relationship with the respondent: the words 'is, or has been' cover both a subsisting and a past relationship. 'Domestic relationship' is defined in Section 2(f).
3. An allegation of domestic violence by that respondent: the woman must allege that she was subjected to an act of domestic violence (as defined in Section 3) by the respondent. At the threshold, an allegation is enough; proof comes at the hearing.

Read together, Sections 2(a) and 2(f) yield a simple test: Is she a woman? Did she live, at any time, in a shared household with the respondent? Were they related by blood, marriage, a marriage-like relationship, adoption or joint family? Does she allege domestic violence by him or her? If the answer to each is yes, she is an aggrieved person.

2. Women Presently or Formerly in a Domestic Relationship

The phrase 'is, or has been' is the key to the temporal reach of the definition. Parliament used the present and the present perfect deliberately. A woman does not cease to be protected because she has been thrown out, has fled, has been divorced, or has been widowed. The same idea appears in Section 2(f), which speaks of persons who live or have, at any point of time, lived together in a shared household, and in Section 2(s), which speaks of a household where she lives or at any stage has lived.

3. Categories of Aggrieved Persons

Because Section 2(f) recognises five bases of relationship, the class of aggrieved persons extends far beyond the wife. The main categories are these.

3.1 Wife

The wife is the paradigm aggrieved person, related by marriage and usually living in the matrimonial home. She may proceed against her husband and, where they shared the household, his relatives. A judicially separated wife remains a wife: in Krishna Bhattacharjee v. Sarathi Choudhury, (2016) 2 SCC 705, the Supreme Court held that a decree of judicial separation does not end the marital status, so the wife remained an aggrieved person, and her claim to her stridhan was not time-barred because the husband's continued refusal to return it was a continuing wrong.

3.2 Former or divorced wife

The limit to this principle appears in Inderjit Singh Grewal v. State of Punjab, (2011) 12 SCC 588. There, the parties had obtained a divorce by mutual consent, and the former wife later filed a complaint alleging that the divorce was a sham and that domestic violence had occurred. The Supreme Court held the proceedings to be an abuse of process, as the decree had not been challenged and the relationship had ended well before the complaint. The two cases are reconciled thus: a divorced wife may seek relief for violence during the marriage, but cannot use the Act to reopen a settled divorce or to allege violence after the relationship has ended.

3.3 Mother, sister and daughter

Relationships of consanguinity are covered. A mother abused or deprived of her home by her son or daughter-in-law, a sister harassed by her brother, and a daughter subjected to violence by her father or brother are all aggrieved persons, provided they live or have lived together in a shared household. Hiral P. Harsora v. Kusum Narottamdas Harsora, (2016) 10 SCC 165, itself arose from a complaint by a mother and daughter against a son and his sisters, and it was to give such women an effective remedy against female relatives that the words 'adult male' were struck down.

3.4 Widow

A widow remains an aggrieved person in relation to her deceased husband's family with whom she shared the household, because the relationship by marriage with the in-laws, and the past residence, satisfy Sections 2(a) and 2(f). Prabha Tyagi (2022) confirmed that a widow may claim the right to reside in the matrimonial home. In Ajay Kumar v. Lata alias Sharuti, (2019) 15 SCC 352, the Supreme Court declined to interfere with an order directing the deceased husband's brother to pay interim maintenance to the widow, since they had lived together in a joint family and the brother controlled the family business.

3.5 Other female relatives

Any other female relative related by blood, marriage, adoption or joint family living qualifies: a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law or sister-in-law, a mother-in-law against her daughter-in-law (after Hiral Harsora), a sister-in-law, an aunt or a grandmother living in the joint family, or an adopted daughter. The test is always the same: a family bond plus a shared roof at some point of time, and an allegation of domestic violence against the particular respondent.

3.6 Woman in a relationship in the nature of marriage

The Act was one of the first Indian statutes to protect women in live-in relationships. But not every cohabitation qualifies. D. Velusamy v. D. Patchaiammal, (2010) 10 SCC 469, requires that the couple hold themselves out as spouses, be of legal age and otherwise qualified to marry, and have voluntarily cohabited for a significant period; a 'keep', a weekend relationship or a one-night stand is not enough. Indra Sarma v. V.K.V. Sarma, (2013) 15 SCC 755, added guidelines (duration, shared household, pooling of resources, domestic arrangements, sexual relationship, children, socialisation, intention and conduct) and held that a woman who knowingly lived with a married man was not in a relationship in the nature of marriage, though it recommended that Parliament extend protection to such women. Where the relationship qualifies, the woman may claim all reliefs, including maintenance: in Lalita Toppo v. State of Jharkhand, (2019) 13 SCC 796, the Court observed that a woman in a live-in relationship may claim maintenance and other reliefs under the DV Act even if she cannot claim under Section 125 CrPC.

3.7 Minors

The definition speaks of 'any woman' and does not exclude a girl below eighteen who is in a domestic relationship; a minor daughter subjected to violence in the family can be the aggrieved person, with the application filed on her behalf by a Protection Officer or 'any other person' under Section 12(1). More commonly, children (of either sex) are protected through their mother's application: a protection order may extend to them, maintenance may be awarded for them under Section 20(1)(d), and temporary custody may be granted under Section 21. A male child cannot himself be an aggrieved person, but he benefits from these orders as a 'child' under Section 2(b).

4. Past Domestic Relationship, Separation and Leaving the Shared Household

A woman who leaves the shared household, or is driven out, does not lose her status. Leaving the home is often the result of domestic violence, and the Act would defeat itself if the very act of escaping violence took a woman outside its protection. Hence:

• Separation in fact (living apart without any decree) does not end the domestic relationship for the purposes of Section 2(a), because she 'has been' in a domestic relationship.
• Judicial separation does not end the marriage (Krishna Bhattacharjee, 2016).
• Leaving the shared household does not end her right to reside: Section 17(2) prohibits eviction or exclusion save in accordance with the procedure established by law, and she may seek a residence order to be restored to the household.
• Jurisdiction follows her: under Section 27, she may apply where she temporarily resides, such as her parents' home after being turned out.

The courts insist, however, that the domestic relationship was real. A woman who never lived in a shared household with the respondent at any point of time cannot ordinarily be his aggrieved person, save in the special situation recognised in Prabha Tyagi, where the relationship by marriage existed and the question was her right of residence in the matrimonial home. Relatives who lived elsewhere and never shared the household are frequently discharged, since vague and omnibus allegations against distant relatives amount to misuse.

5. Proceedings after Divorce

Three situations should be distinguished:

1. Divorce during pendency of DV proceedings: the proceedings continue; the divorce does not render them infructuous, and the Magistrate may grant reliefs for the violence proved (Juveria).
2. Application after divorce, for violence during the marriage: maintainable in principle, since she 'has been' in a domestic relationship and liability for past violence survives the divorce, subject to scrutiny for abuse of process (Juveria; contrast Inderjit Singh Grewal).
3. Application after divorce, for acts after divorce: ordinarily not maintainable, since the respondent's later conduct occurs outside any domestic relationship; her remedies then lie in ordinary civil and criminal law. Denial of stridhan is treated differently, as a continuing wrong (Krishna Bhattacharjee).

The nature of relief also changes after divorce. Reliefs linked to an ongoing relationship, such as the right to reside in the shared household, become harder to claim, while compensation, monetary relief for past losses, return of stridhan and maintenance (subject to personal law and Section 144 BNSS) remain available. High Courts have continued to apply Juveria: for example, the Allahabad High Court (2026) has reiterated that a subsequent divorce decree does not absolve a husband of liability for domestic violence already committed.

6. Incidents Occurring before Separation and before the Act

The Act looks backwards in two ways. First, incidents that occurred before separation or divorce can found relief after it, as explained above. Second, incidents that occurred before the Act came into force on 26 October 2006 can be taken into account.

7. Temporal Scope of Relief

The temporal questions can be summarised in four propositions:

• No limitation for a Section 12 application: in Kamatchi v. Lakshmi Narayanan (2022), the Supreme Court held that the period of limitation in Section 468 CrPC does not apply to an application under Section 12; it applies only to a complaint for breach under Section 31, and runs from the date of the breach. Delay is relevant only to the credibility of the claim and the nature of relief.
• Past relationship suffices: 'is, or has been' and 'at any point of time' (Prabha Tyagi).
• Pre-Act conduct counts: V.D. Bhanot.
• Continuing wrongs: withholding of stridhan and continuing economic abuse give a fresh cause with every refusal (Krishna Bhattacharjee).

On the other side, the relief must be proportionate to the present situation. An order for protection presupposes a real risk of future violence; a residence order presupposes a shared household to which she can return or an alternative; monetary relief must relate to expenses incurred and losses suffered as a result of domestic violence. And under Section 25(2), orders can be altered, modified or revoked on a change in circumstances, which the Supreme Court in S. Vijikumari v. Mowneshwarachari C. (2024) held operates prospectively from the date of the change.

8. Related Topics and Provisions