Position of Mother-in-Law, Sister-in-Law as "Respondent"

Few questions under the Protection of Women from Domestic Violence Act, 2005 have generated as much litigation as a deceptively simple one: can a woman be a respondent? The Act is, on its face, gendered legislation. Its aggrieved person must be a woman; its original definition of "respondent" in Section 2(q) spoke of an "adult male person". Yet domestic cruelty within the Indian household is very often perpetrated, or orchestrated, by women, the mother-in-law and the sister-in-law foremost among them. The courts therefore had to reconcile a male-centric definition with a lived reality in which the saas and the nanad are frequently the principal tormentors. This chapter traces that reconciliation, from the proviso to Section 2(q), through the Supreme Court's reading in Sandhya Wankhade, to the constitutional surgery performed in Hiral P. Harsora, which deleted the words "adult male" altogether and left every person, male or female, capable of being a respondent.

The Statutory Puzzle in Section 2(q)

The Protection of Women from Domestic Violence Act, 2005 ("the DV Act" or "the 2005 Act") was enacted to provide a civil remedy to women subjected to violence within the home. As originally enacted, Section 2(q) defined a "respondent" thus: "respondent means any adult male person who is, or has been, in a domestic relationship with the aggrieved person and against whom the aggrieved person has sought any relief under this Act: Provided that an aggrieved wife or female living in a relationship in the nature of a marriage may also file a complaint against a relative of the husband or the male partner."

Read literally, the main clause confined respondents to adult males. This produced an awkward result. The aggrieved person under Section 2(a) is always a woman, and the most common abusers within the matrimonial home, after the husband, are his mother and his sisters. If respondents could only be adult males, the principal female perpetrators escaped the Act entirely. The proviso was the legislature's attempt to soften this: it allowed an aggrieved wife or a woman in a relationship in the nature of marriage to proceed against "a relative of the husband or the male partner". The whole controversy turned on whether "relative" in that proviso included female relatives, and if so, how far.

For an overview of how this definition sits within the wider scheme of the Act, see the chapter on introduction, object, background and scheme and the dedicated chapter on definitions.

Reading the Definition Against the Object of the Act

Statutes carry their purpose in their Preamble and Statement of Objects and Reasons, and the courts repeatedly invoked these to resolve the puzzle in Section 2(q). The long title describes the Act as one "to provide for more effective protection of the rights of women guaranteed under the Constitution who are victims of violence of any kind occurring within the family". The expression "violence of any kind" became central. If a woman could be brutalised by her mother-in-law and her husband's sisters acting in concert with, or even independently of, her husband, an interpretation that immunised those female relatives would defeat the very object of the legislation.

The Statement of Objects and Reasons itself contemplated that a wife or a female in a live-in relationship might need a remedy against relatives of the husband. The courts read this as a deliberate widening of the net, not a narrowing of it. A purposive construction therefore pulled strongly against the literal "adult male" limitation in the main clause, and this tension is what the case law had to work out. The definition cannot be read in isolation from the conduct it targets, set out in the chapter on the definition of domestic violence.

Sandhya Wankhade: Mother-in-Law and Sister-in-Law as Respondents

The first authoritative answer came from the Supreme Court in Sou. Sandhya Manoj Wankhade v. Manoj Bhimrao Wankhade, (2011) 3 SCC 650, decided on 31 January 2011 by a Bench of Altamas Kabir and Cyriac Joseph, JJ. The aggrieved wife had arrayed three respondents: her husband (R-1), her mother-in-law Ramabai (R-2), and her sister-in-law (R-3). The Magistrate had entertained the complaint against all three, but on revision the Sessions Court and later the Bombay High Court took the view that, in light of the "adult male person" language in Section 2(q), the proceedings could not continue against the two female relatives. The wife appealed to the Supreme Court.

The Court reversed. It reasoned that while the main part of Section 2(q) spoke of an adult male person, the proviso expressly permitted an aggrieved wife or a female in a relationship in the nature of marriage to file a complaint against a "relative of the husband or the male partner". Crucially, the legislature had not used the word "male" before "relative", nor had it given the expression "relative" any restrictive meaning. Had Parliament intended to confine respondents to male relatives, it would have said so expressly. The Court held: "It is true that the expression 'female' has not been used in the proviso to Section 2(q) also, but, on the other hand, if the legislature intended to exclude females from the ambit of the complaint, which can be filed by an aggrieved wife, females would have been specifically excluded, instead of it being provided that a complaint could also be filed against a relative of the husband or the male partner."

The result was decisive for the topic of this chapter. The mother-in-law and the sister-in-law were squarely within the definition of "respondent". The trial court was directed to proceed against respondent Nos. 2 and 3 as well. Sandhya Wankhade thus stands as the foundational authority that a saas and a nanad can be made respondents in a DV proceeding, notwithstanding the "adult male person" phrase.

What Sandhya Wankhade Left Open

Although Sandhya Wankhade opened the door to female relatives, it did so only through the proviso, and the proviso was itself limited. By its terms it operated only where the aggrieved person was "an aggrieved wife or female living in a relationship in the nature of a marriage". That left two categories outside its reach. First, an aggrieved woman who was not a wife or a live-in partner, for example a sister, a mother or a daughter complaining of violence within the natal family, could not obviously invoke a proviso framed around the matrimonial relationship. Second, the proviso permitted action only against "a relative of the husband or the male partner", which raised the question whether a female could ever be a respondent where there was no husband or male partner at all.

In other words, Sandhya Wankhade resolved the most common factual situation, the harassed daughter-in-law versus her in-laws, but did not free the definition from its structural dependence on a male anchor. The decision was a generous reading of the proviso rather than a constitutional reconstruction of the section. That larger task awaited Harsora.

Hiral P. Harsora: Deleting "Adult Male" from Section 2(q)

The decisive development came in Hiral P. Harsora v. Kusum Narottamdas Harsora, (2016) 10 SCC 165, decided on 6 October 2016 by Kurian Joseph and R.F. Nariman, JJ. The case arose from a Bombay High Court judgment, and the question was the constitutional validity of the words "adult male person" in Section 2(q). A mother and daughter had complained of domestic violence at the hands of, among others, the daughter-in-law and other female relatives of the family. The literal definition, confining respondents to adult males, threatened to defeat their complaint.

Justice Nariman, writing for the Court, held that the words "adult male" did not square with Article 14 of the Constitution. The classification embedded in the section, distinguishing adult male perpetrators from female or minor perpetrators, bore no rational relation to the object of the Act, which was to protect women from violence "of any kind". As the Court put it, the "microscopic difference between male and female, adult and non-adult" had no rational nexus with the legislative purpose. Domestic violence was conceptually gender-neutral as to its perpetrators, even though the Act protected only female victims, and a woman could perpetrate it as readily as a man, often acting through minor or female accomplices.

The Court therefore struck down the words "adult male person" from Section 2(q). The consequence was profound: the definition of respondent now reads simply as "any person who is, or has been, in a domestic relationship with the aggrieved person and against whom the aggrieved person has sought any relief under this Act". Every person, of any gender and any age, could now be a respondent, provided the threshold of a domestic relationship was met.

The Proviso Rendered Otiose

A necessary corollary followed in Harsora. Once "adult male" was excised from the main clause, the proviso, which had been drafted precisely to carve female relatives back in through the route approved in Sandhya Wankhade, lost its purpose. The Court held that the proviso to Section 2(q), "being rendered otiose, also stands deleted". With the main definition now embracing every person, there was no longer any need for a special clause permitting complaints against relatives of the husband, because such relatives were already respondents in their own right.

This is an important point for students to grasp precisely. After Harsora, one should no longer cite the proviso as the source of a female relative's liability. The source is the main definition itself, shorn of "adult male". The proviso is gone. A mother-in-law or sister-in-law is a respondent not because she is a "relative of the husband" but because she is a "person" in a domestic relationship with the aggrieved woman against whom relief is sought.

Reading Sandhya Wankhade and Harsora Together

Examiners frequently test whether a candidate appreciates the relationship between the two decisions. Sandhya Wankhade (2011) and Harsora (2016) are not in conflict; they are successive stages in the same trajectory. Sandhya Wankhade achieved the practical result, female relatives can be respondents, by a liberal construction of the proviso while leaving the "adult male" phrase intact. Harsora achieved a broader result, anyone can be a respondent, by constitutional invalidation of the phrase, which then made the proviso superfluous.

The correct modern statement of the law is therefore this: a respondent under the DV Act is any person, male or female, adult or minor, in a domestic relationship with the aggrieved woman. The mother-in-law and the sister-in-law are squarely respondents. Sandhya Wankhade remains good law for the proposition that female relatives are amenable to the Act and is still cited, but the doctrinal foundation has shifted from the proviso to the post-Harsora main definition. Where an answer must choose a single authority, Harsora is now the controlling case on the meaning of "respondent".

Domestic Relationship: The Real Gatekeeper

If gender no longer limits who may be a respondent, the operative limitation is the requirement of a "domestic relationship" under Section 2(f). A mother-in-law or sister-in-law can be a respondent only if she is, or has been, in a domestic relationship with the aggrieved woman, meaning they live or have lived together in a shared household, related by consanguinity, marriage, or a relationship in the nature of marriage, adoption, or as members of a joint family.

The Delhi High Court applied this filter in Vijay Verma v. State (NCT of Delhi) (2010), holding that the domestic relationship subsists so long as the parties live together in a shared household and comes to an end when a family member permanently moves out and establishes a separate household. A married daughter who has set up her own matrimonial home, or a son who has moved out with his family, cannot rely on stale, long-severed cohabitation to drag erstwhile household members into DV proceedings. The phrase "at any point of time" in Section 2(f) does not revive a relationship that has been genuinely and permanently abandoned; it protects a person who has continuously lived in the household as of right but is temporarily kept out.

Consequently, naming a sister-in-law who married out of the family years earlier, or a mother-in-law with whom the aggrieved woman never shared a household, will not survive scrutiny. The respondent must satisfy Section 2(f) independently of gender. The contours of this concept are developed further in the chapter on the definitions.

Shared Household and Liability of Female Relatives

Closely linked to domestic relationship is the concept of "shared household" in Section 2(s), which often determines whether reliefs such as a residence order can be passed against in-laws. In S.R. Batra v. Taruna Batra, (2007) 3 SCC 169, the Supreme Court had taken a restrictive view, confining the shared household to property owned or rented by the husband or to joint family property in which he had a share, thereby insulating a house owned exclusively by the mother-in-law.

That restrictive view was overruled in Satish Chander Ahuja v. Sneha Ahuja, (2021) 1 SCC 414, decided on 15 October 2020 by a three-Judge Bench. The Court held that S.R. Batra did not lay down the correct law and that a shared household may include a house belonging to a relative of the husband, including a father-in-law or mother-in-law, with whom the aggrieved woman has lived in a domestic relationship. The practical effect is that female relatives who own the matrimonial home cannot, merely by asserting exclusive title, defeat a daughter-in-law's claim to reside there; their ownership does not place them beyond the Act. This dovetails with the expanded respondent definition, the in-law is both a competent respondent and a potential title-holder of the shared household.

Residence Rights Even Without Actual Residence

The reach of reliefs against in-laws was further widened in Prabha Tyagi v. Kamlesh Devi, 2022 SCC OnLine SC 607, decided on 12 May 2022 by M.R. Shah and B.V. Nagarathna, JJ. A widow had moved against her father-in-law and mother-in-law seeking, among other things, the right to reside in the shared household and restitution of her streedhan, although she had not actually lived in that household.

The Supreme Court held that a woman's right to reside in a shared household under Section 17 is not contingent on her having actually resided there; the right extends to constructive residence. It further held that a subsisting domestic relationship at the time of filing is not essential, a past domestic relationship can found a claim. For the purposes of this chapter, the significance lies in the identity of the respondents: the father-in-law and mother-in-law were proper respondents, and reliefs could be sought against them even where the aggrieved woman had never physically lived with them. This confirms how comprehensively the female relative, especially the mother-in-law, has been brought within the respondent net and made answerable to substantive reliefs.

The Other Side: When the Mother-in-Law is the Aggrieved Person

The expansion of "respondent" has a mirror-image consequence that students should not overlook. Once a female relative can be a respondent, a daughter-in-law can herself be arrayed as a respondent where the aggrieved person is, for example, the mother-in-law. In Kusum Lata Sharma v. State (2011), the Delhi High Court held that a mother harassed by her son is an "aggrieved person", and where that harassment is inflicted through the son's wife, the daughter-in-law falls within the ambit of "respondent".

This is the logical completion of the Sandhya Wankhade and Harsora line. The protective umbrella of the Act remains over women only, the aggrieved person must always be a woman, but the category of respondents is gender-neutral. A senior woman in the household may invoke the Act against a younger woman, just as a younger woman may invoke it against her mother-in-law and sister-in-law. The female relative's position as a potential respondent is therefore not a one-way street running only against in-laws; it operates wherever a woman seeks protection and another household member, of whatever gender, is the source of the violence.

Brothers-in-Law and the Wider Family Net

The reasoning that brings female relatives within the Act applies with equal force to other relatives such as the brother-in-law. In Ajay Kumar v. Lata @ Sharuti, (2019) 15 SCC 352, the Supreme Court, per Dr D.Y. Chandrachud and Hemant Gupta, JJ., upheld an interim maintenance order under the DV Act against the elder brother of the deceased husband. The widow and her child sought maintenance from the brother-in-law, who, along with the deceased, had run a joint family kirana business. The Court held that the appellant fell within the expanded definition of respondent and that, given the joint family arrangement and the assets in his hands, liability to pay maintenance could properly be fastened on him.

Although Ajay Kumar concerns a male relative, it is instructive because it illustrates the same governing principle, after Harsora the definition of respondent reaches any person in a domestic relationship with the aggrieved woman, and substantive reliefs, including maintenance under Section 20, may be ordered against them. The mother-in-law, sister-in-law, father-in-law and brother-in-law all stand on the same footing as potential respondents; what matters is the domestic relationship and the role each played in the violence or in supporting the aggrieved woman.

Practical Pleading and Common Pitfalls

From a litigation standpoint, the expansion of "respondent" has not given complainants an unlimited licence to array every relative. Courts remain alert to the over-implication of in-laws, a tendency long criticised in the parallel context of Section 498-A of the Indian Penal Code (now reflected in the corresponding provision of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita). General, omnibus and unsubstantiated allegations against a mother-in-law or sister-in-law, without specific particulars of the acts of domestic violence attributed to each, are liable to be quashed or rejected.

The practical lessons are these. First, each female relative named as a respondent must be shown to have been in a domestic relationship with the aggrieved woman within Section 2(f). Second, the complaint should attribute specific acts to each respondent rather than lumping the in-laws together. Third, a relative who has genuinely and permanently moved out of the shared household, as in Vijay Verma, is not a proper respondent. Handled with this discipline, the post-Harsora definition is a powerful instrument; handled carelessly, the very breadth of the definition invites quashing. The procedural route by which these reliefs are sought is set out in the chapter on the procedure for obtaining reliefs.

Conclusion: The Current Position

The journey of Section 2(q) is a textbook illustration of purposive and constitutional interpretation overtaking a literal text. The provision began life confining respondents to "adult male persons", with a proviso grudgingly admitting relatives of the husband. Sandhya Wankhade read that proviso generously to include female relatives, settling that the mother-in-law and the sister-in-law are respondents. Harsora then went to the root, striking down "adult male" as violative of Article 14 and deleting the now-redundant proviso, so that any person in a domestic relationship with the aggrieved woman is a respondent.

The settled position today is that the protection of the DV Act is for women alone, but the liability under it is gender-neutral. A mother-in-law, sister-in-law, daughter-in-law, father-in-law or brother-in-law may all be respondents, subject always to proof of a domestic relationship and specific acts of domestic violence. For a fuller picture, study this chapter alongside the chapters on definitions, the definition of domestic violence, and the broader Domestic Violence Act notes hub.