Batting for Battered Women

In a laudable judgment for women subjected to domestic violence, the Court held that they are entitled to claim their right of residence in a shared household even though the property belongs to their in-laws

- Shaheen Parween

THE Supreme Court offered a ray of hope to victims of domestic violence when it gave an order recently which dealt with questions of law pertaining to the interpretation and working of the Protection of Women from Domestic Violence Act, 2005.

A three-judge bench comprising Justices Ashok Bhushan, R Subhash Reddy and MR Shah, overruling an earlier judgement, held that a woman living with her husband in premises belonging to his relatives has a right to claim residence in a “shared household”. However, in an earlier judgment in 2006 (SR Bat ra and Anr vs Taruna Batra), the Court had held that a woman cannot claim a legal right to live in a shared household owned by her mother-in-law.

The present bench said that the SR Batra case did “not lay down the correct law” and did not correctly interpret Section 2(1)(s) of the 2005 Act. “It further held that shared household referred to in Section 2(s) is the shared household of aggrieved person where she was living at the time”.

The bench observed that “the definition of shared household given in Section 2(s) cannot be read to mean that shared household can only be that household which is household of the joint family of which husband is a member or in which husband of the aggrieved person has a share”.