DV Act: Residence Order, Protection Order and Monetary Relief

If you face violence or abuse at home, you do not have to file a police FIR to get protection. Under the Protection of Women from Domestic Violence Act, 2005, you can apply directly to a Magistrate for a residence order so you are not thrown out of your home, a protection order to stop the abuse, and monetary relief to cover your losses. This is a civil remedy, and a single application can ask for all of these at once.

This guide walks you through what each order does, the exact sections of the Act that grant it, and how to file the application. Every section number below is quoted from the Act itself.

A reader from Pune wrote to us last year. Her husband had stopped supporting the household and had begun threatening to lock her out of the flat, which was in his name. She thought that because the flat was not in her name, she had no right to stay. That is exactly the fear the Domestic Violence Act was written to remove. Under Section 17, her right to live in that home did not depend on whose name was on the papers. She applied to the local Magistrate, asked for a residence order and monetary relief together, and the court restrained her husband from evicting her while the case was heard.

The Act lets a woman in a domestic relationship ask a Magistrate for several civil orders. Here are the four that matter most.

Section 17(1) says: “Notwithstanding anything contained in any other law for the time being in force, every woman in a domestic relationship shall have the right to reside in the shared household, whether or not she has any right, title or beneficial interest in the same.” Section 17(2) adds that you “shall not be evicted or excluded from the shared household or any part of it” except by due process of law. In plain words: it does not matter whose name the house is in. You have a legal right to live there.

Under Section 18, once the Magistrate is satisfied that domestic violence has taken place or is likely to, the court can pass a protection order forbidding the respondent from committing or aiding any act of domestic violence, from entering your place of employment or a child's school, from communicating with you “in any form, whatsoever, including personal, oral or written or electronic or telephonic contact”, from alienating assets or your stridhan, and from harming anyone who helps you.

Section 19(1) lets the Magistrate, on being satisfied that domestic violence has taken place, pass a residence order that can:

1. restrain the respondent from dispossessing or disturbing your possession of the shared household, “whether or not the respondent has a legal or equitable interest” in it;
2. direct the respondent to remove himself from the shared household (this clause cannot be passed against a woman, by the proviso to Section 19);
3. restrain the respondent or his relatives from entering the portion where you live;
4. restrain him from alienating, disposing of or encumbering the household;
5. or direct him to “secure same level of alternate accommodation” for you as you enjoyed, or to pay rent for it.

Section 20(1) lets the Magistrate direct the respondent to pay monetary relief for expenses and losses caused by the domestic violence. The Act lists, among others: “(a) the loss of earnings; (b) the medical expenses; © the loss caused due to the destruction, damage or removal of any property”; and “(d) the maintenance for the aggrieved person as well as her children”. The relief must be “adequate, fair and reasonable and consistent with the standard of living to which the aggrieved person is accustomed” (Section 20(2)), and it can be a lump sum or monthly payments.

Separately, Section 22 lets you ask the Magistrate to direct the respondent “to pay compensation and damages for the injuries, including mental torture and emotional distress, caused by the acts of domestic violence”. This is in addition to the other reliefs above.

1. Approach a Protection Officer or service provider. The application can be filed by you, by a Protection Officer, or by any other person on your behalf (Section 12(1)). A Protection Officer is appointed by the State in each district to help you.
2. Get the Domestic Incident Report (DIR) prepared. On receiving your complaint, the Protection Officer prepares the DIR in Form I and sends it to the Magistrate (Rule 5 of the 2006 Rules). Before passing any order, the Magistrate must consider this report (proviso to Section 12(1)).
3. File the application to the Magistrate in Form II. Your application under Section 12 must be in Form II “or as nearly as possible thereto” (Rule 6(1)). You may seek the assistance of the Protection Officer to prepare and forward it (Rule 6(2)). The competent court is the Judicial Magistrate of the first class or the Metropolitan Magistrate where you reside, work, or carry on business, where the respondent does so, or where the cause of action arose (Section 27).
4. Ask for everything in one application. A single Form II can seek a protection order, a residence order, monetary relief and compensation together. You do not need separate cases.
5. Note the timelines. The Magistrate “shall fix the first date of hearing, which shall not ordinarily be beyond three days from the date of receipt of the application” (Section 12(4)), and “shall endeavour to dispose of every application within a period of sixty days from the date of its first hearing” (Section 12(5)).
6. Ask for interim orders. Under Section 23, the Magistrate can pass interim and even ex parte orders straight away, before the full hearing finishes.

This is where the civil track gains teeth. Under Section 31, “a breach of protection order, or of an interim protection order, by the respondent shall be an offence under this Act and shall be punishable with imprisonment of either description for a term which may extend to one year, or with fine which may extend to twenty thousand rupees, or with both.” Section 32 makes that offence cognizable and non-bailable, and says the court may convict on the sole testimony of the aggrieved person. So once a protection order exists, breaking it is a criminal offence on its own.

If a magistrate's order goes against you, Section 29 gives a right of appeal to the Court of Session within thirty days.

No. The Domestic Violence Act gives you a separate civil route. You apply to a Magistrate under Section 12 for protection, residence and monetary orders. You can still file a criminal complaint as well if you choose, but it is not a precondition for these orders.

No. Section 17(1) gives every woman in a domestic relationship the right to reside in the shared household “whether or not she has any right, title or beneficial interest in the same”. A residence order under Section 19 can specifically restrain the respondent from dispossessing you.

The Magistrate must ordinarily fix the first hearing within three days of receiving the application (Section 12(4)) and must endeavour to dispose of it within sixty days of that first hearing (Section 12(5)). Interim or ex parte orders under Section 23 can come even sooner.

It is the official record of the abuse, prepared in Form I under Rule 5 of the 2006 Rules, usually by the Protection Officer or a service provider. The Magistrate must consider it before passing orders. Your own application is filed separately, in Form II.

Locate your district Protection Officer (appointed by the State Women and Child Development department) and ask for help preparing the Domestic Incident Report and the Form II application. A service provider or a legal aid lawyer can also assist. Keep copies of anything that shows the abuse and your losses, because Section 20 relief is calculated on real expenses.

For a plain-language walkthrough of how citizens use Indian law to assert their rights, see The RTI Playbook, or browse more guides on the RTI Wiki homepage.

This article explains the law as it stands and is not a substitute for advice from a lawyer on your specific facts.