Welfare Experts and Proceedings in Camera: Sections 15 and 16 of the Domestic Violence Act, 2005

A domestic violence case is not an ordinary lis between strangers: it reaches into a family's most private rooms, and it often involves children, trauma and shame. Two short provisions equip the Magistrate for that delicacy. Section 15 lets the court call in a welfare expert, preferably a woman, to assist its functions; Section 16 lets it close the courtroom doors and proceed in camera. Together they adapt the criminal court's public, adversarial habitat to the needs of a family in crisis. This note explains both provisions and the practice that has grown around them.

1. Assistance of a Welfare Expert: Section 15

1.1 Appointment and the preference for women

The power is the Magistrate's own, exercisable in any proceeding and at any stage, on request or suo motu. The person chosen may be anyone the Magistrate thinks fit: a social worker, a family counsellor, a psychologist, a child welfare professional, a member of a service provider, and, unusually, even a person related to the aggrieved person, a concession to the reality that a trusted aunt or elder may understand and calm a family better than any stranger. The section states a preference for women, matching the parallel preferences for women Protection Officers (Section 8(2)) and reflecting the comfort of the aggrieved woman. The expert assists the court, not either party: she is a neutral aid to the judicial function, distinct from the counsellor under Section 14, who works with the parties.

1.2 The expert's role

What 'assisting him in discharging his functions' means in practice:

• Understanding the family: a home visit or interviews that help the court see the household's dynamics, the safety risks, and the woman's actual living conditions.
• Children: ascertaining a child's wishes and welfare where custody under Section 21 or visitation is in issue, and shielding the child from the adversarial process.
• Trauma-informed communication: helping a frightened or traumatised woman state her case, and advising the court on how to record her evidence without re-traumatisation.
• Welfare inputs for relief design: practical suggestions on residence arrangements, safety conditions and rehabilitation that legal argument alone rarely supplies.
• Monitoring: where directed, reporting on compliance with orders, particularly residence and custody arrangements.

The expert's report or opinion is material the court weighs; it binds no one, and the parties may respond to it. The section thus imports the welfare perspective of family courts (compare Section 5 of the Family Courts Act, 1984, which similarly associates social welfare agencies and counsellors) into the Magistrate's court that administers this Act.

2. Proceedings in Camera: Section 16

2.1 The two conditions

An in camera hearing, one from which the public and press are excluded, needs two things under the section: the Magistrate's satisfaction that the circumstances warrant it, and the desire of either party. Either party may ask, the woman, most commonly, but also a respondent facing embarrassing allegations, and the court then judges whether the circumstances justify privacy. The provision is an exception to the constitutional norm of open courts, which is why it is framed as a discretion anchored to the case's circumstances rather than an automatic rule; but in this jurisdiction the discretion leans naturally towards privacy, because the subject matter is the inside of a home.

2.2 When the circumstances warrant it

Recognised occasions for closing the doors include:

• Sexual abuse allegations: details of sexual violence and indignity, whose public narration humiliates the victim afresh; anonymity in such matters is protected elsewhere in the law as well (Section 72 BNS penalises disclosure of the identity of victims of certain sexual offences).
• Sensitive family disputes: intimate medical, psychiatric or marital details; allegations touching children, who may also be witnesses; matters of reputation that publicity would destroy on mere allegation.
• Safety: cases where public hearings would expose the woman's whereabouts, her shelter, or her protectors to a dangerous respondent.
• Candour: where privacy is the price of truth, a woman who cannot speak of her marriage before a crowded courtroom may speak freely in camera.

2.3 Protection from public exposure

In camera proceedings sit within a wider architecture of privacy: the shelter home need not disclose the woman's whereabouts to the respondent (Rule 16); counselling happens in non-threatening private settings (Rule 14); courts anonymise parties in reported judgments of this character; and media reporting of in camera matters is restricted by the general law, publication of proceedings held in camera without the court's leave is punishable, and the open justice principle yields where the statute itself authorises privacy. The object throughout is the same: the woman should not have to buy protection at the price of public exposure, and a family that may yet be repaired should not be tried in the town square.

3. Related Topics and Provisions