Shelter Homes and Medical Facilities: Sections 6 and 7 of the Domestic Violence Act, 2005

Court orders take days; a woman fleeing violence needs a bed and a doctor tonight. Sections 6 and 7 supply the Act's emergency infrastructure: a shelter home must give her shelter on request, and a medical facility must give her medical aid, in each case without any precondition. Around these two duties the Rules build the practical detail: who may make the request, what records are prepared, and how the Protection Officer knits shelter, treatment and evidence together. This note explains both sections, their operation in practice, and the evidentiary value of the records they generate.

1. The Statutory Duties

Both sections share one architecture: a request, by the woman herself or on her behalf by a Protection Officer or service provider, triggers a mandatory duty, 'shall provide'. A 'shelter home' and a 'medical facility' are, by Sections 2(t) and 2(j), those notified by the State Government for the purposes of the Act; the State's duty to notify them flows from Section 11, under which governments must ensure that the services of shelter homes and medical facilities are made available.

2. Shelter Homes: Section 6

2.1 The request and the duty

Rule 16 of the Protection of Women from Domestic Violence Rules, 2006 completes the section. The request may be oral or written; on request by the aggrieved person, the shelter home is bound to give shelter, and it cannot insist on a domestic incident report before admitting her. If she so desires, the shelter home need not disclose her whereabouts to the respondent, a life-saving confidentiality where the abuser is searching for her. The duty is immediate: shelter is to be provided when sought, not after verification of her claims, because the section protects against the night, not after the trial.

2.2 Children accompanying the woman

A woman rarely flees alone. Since a child (Section 2(b)) is protected through her, and custody of children may be granted to her under Section 21, shelter necessarily extends to the children accompanying her; turning away a mother because she carries her children would defeat the section. State shelter schemes, including homes run under the Swadhar Greh and now the Shakti Sadan programme of the Ministry of Women and Child Development, and the One Stop Centres (Sakhi) that provide integrated temporary shelter, medical aid, police assistance, legal and psychological counselling under one roof, expressly accommodate women together with their children, subject to scheme norms.

2.3 Rehabilitation beyond the emergency

A shelter home is a bridge, not a destination. The longer arc, counselling, vocational training, reintegration or independent living, is served by the shelter schemes and by the Act's own remedies: a residence order restoring her to the shared household or securing alternative accommodation (Section 19), monetary relief to live on (Section 20), and compensation (Section 22). In We the Women of India v. Union of India (20 May 2025), the Supreme Court directed all States and Union Territories to identify and notify shelter homes at district and taluka levels within fixed time limits, recognising that in much of the country the statutory infrastructure existed only on paper.

3. Medical Facilities: Section 7

3.1 The duty to treat

Rule 17 parallels Rule 16: the medical facility shall not refuse medical assistance to an aggrieved person, and it cannot demand a domestic incident report as a precondition of treatment. The duty covers any medical aid the woman needs, emergency treatment of injuries, care in pregnancy, psychiatric and psychological care for the trauma that abuse inflicts. It sits alongside the general law: every injured person is entitled to emergency medical care, and a registered medical practitioner must provide it (Parmanand Katara v. Union of India, (1989) 4 SCC 286).

3.2 Records and examination

Section 7 is also an evidence provision in disguise. Under Rule 17, if the woman has not made a domestic incident report, the person in charge of the medical facility shall fill it in Form I and forward it to the local Protection Officer; the facility supplies a free copy of the medical examination report to the aggrieved person. Under Section 9(1)(g) and Rule 8, the Protection Officer must get the woman medically examined if she has sustained bodily injuries and forward the report to the police station and the Magistrate. The medical record thus created, injuries, their age and pattern, treatment given, history recorded from the patient, becomes contemporaneous corroboration in the DV proceeding and in any criminal case.

3.3 Emergency support

In an emergency the machinery can move without paperwork: the police, a service provider, a relative or a neighbour may take the woman straight to hospital; the 181 Women Helpline and One Stop Centres coordinate rescue, medical aid and shelter; and the Protection Officer's duties include arranging transport to the medical facility or shelter home where needed. The design principle throughout is that no form stands between the woman and safety: reports follow the rescue, never precede it.

4. The Protection Officer as Coordinator

The Protection Officer is the hinge between the woman and both institutions. Under Section 9 and the Rules, the Protection Officer must maintain the list of shelter homes and medical facilities in the area, make available a safe shelter home if she so requires and forward a copy of the report of having lodged her there, get her medically examined when injured, and attach the shelter and medical records to the domestic incident report placed before the Magistrate. Where the woman approaches a shelter home or hospital first, those institutions route the papers back to the Protection Officer. The design ensures that one office holds the complete file: complaint, shelter, treatment and evidence.

5. Evidentiary Relevance of Medical and Shelter Records

Two cautions balance the picture. Records help but are not preconditions: treatment and shelter cannot be refused for want of a report, and relief cannot be refused merely because the woman never reached a hospital (Prabha Tyagi v. Kamlesh Devi, (2022) 8 SCC 90, holding the domestic incident report itself non-mandatory). And records are evidence, not verdicts: they are weighed with the whole material under Explanation II to Section 3.

6. Related Topics and Provisions