Document Type

Essay

Degree Name

Master of Laws

Abstract

In the late 1970s and early 1980s, Indian newspapers and magazines began reporting stories of domestic abuse in matrimonial homes ranging from women subjected to dowry demands, beatings, everyday mistreatment, financial control, expulsion from the home, and even being burnt to death. Feminists recognized this as an urgent issue to respond to as these reports highlighted that domestic violence is endemic. Everybody knew a victim. Their own mothers, sisters, friends and, in some cases, they themselves were facing violence within marriage. The lobbying of women’s groups helped prompt the passage of Section 498A in 1983, which criminalized cruelty against women committed by a husband or any of his relatives. Although the public discourse was saturated with reports of dowry demands and bride burning, the provision broadly defines cruelty to include any kind of violence including mental, emotional, verbal or financial. Studies have nonetheless shown that 498A has not demonstrably reduced domestic violence against married women. Domestic violence continues to be an endemic reality in Indian homes. According to recent OECD data published in the Global Gender Gap Report 2024, the country ranks among the worst in the Asia Pacific region for this indicator, with nearly one in five (18%) Indian women having reported ever suffering intimate partner physical and/or sexual violence. Another infographic based on the crime statistics data published by the Indian Government shows that of more than 365,000 acts of violence against women recorded in 2022 by Indian authorities, 38% were cruelty by a husband or relatives. In addition, dowry deaths, referring to the deaths of married women resulting from the groom’s family demanding that the bride’s family transfer any property as consideration to marry the bride, accounted for 2% of reported crimes against women. This brings the proportion of domestic violence in the total number of reported violence against women in India to at least 40%, considering underestimation due to unreported cases.

Disciplines

Comparative and Foreign Law | Criminal Law | Domestic and Intimate Partner Violence | Law

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