Ties That Harm - Rethinking Legal Protection Against Familial Violence Beyond The Spouse
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Category: General Law
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TIES THAT HARM: RETHINKING LEGAL PROTECTION
AGAINST FAMILIAL VIOLENCE BEYOND THE SPOUSE
Geetika Garg, Chanakya National Law University, Patna
ABSTRACT
When we think about domestic violence, it is often framed in terms of spousal violence or partner violence. However, many people actually face serious violence from family members whether it be by parents, siblings, adult children, grandchildren, relatives or caregivers. This violence is equally damaging as that we normally consider, but it is rarely talked about and is hardly recognized by Indian law. Current legal frameworks emphasize domestic violence by partner but leaves a huge gap when it comes to protecting individuals from abuse that happens in other family relationships. This paper talks about familial abuse that is non-spousal it is something that is often treated as a personal or "private matter" rather than taken seriously as an explicit concern of the law.
Whether it be an elderly parent being harmed by their adult children or a sibling subject to perpetual emotional harm at their family home, the fact is that familial abuse is frequently not called out and is not reported. This study aims to address the issues related to the absence of legal framework providing recognition to such cases in India and to look at how other countries have addressed similar issues more inclusively. What makes this issue even more complex is how the legal system usually treats families as a single unit rather than looking at the power dynamics within them. This paper argues that we need to shift from a one-size-fits-all understanding of family to a more nuanced view that recognises internal hierarchies, dependencies, and vulnerabilities.
By doing so, we can begin to imagine legal reforms that respond not just to violence, but recognize the broader context in which violence can be perpetuated, without opposition.
Introduction
“She’s your mother, how can you file a complaint against her? ” “He’s your brother—what kind of person drags their own blood to court? ” Statements like these reflect how deeply embedded our belief in family sanctity is. Families, in the Indian imagination, are assumed to be sites of unconditional love, protection, and duty. But for many, family is not a place of safety it is the origin of violence. And yet, most of these stories are never told, and even fewer are heard by the law. In 2023, a 25-year-old man in Hyderabad was arrested after his younger brother, aged just 21, was found locked in a windowless storeroom. For months, the brother had been subjected to physical violence, isolation, starvation, and mental abuse all at the hands of his own sibling. The neighbours dismissed the signs, writing it off as “personal family matters.
” Even the police hesitated to take swift action, because the situation didn’t fall neatly within the legal definitions of domestic violence under Indian law1. There was no clear protection for victims like him those abused by a family member who isn’t a spouse or romantic partner. Legal tools like the Protection of Women from Domestic Violence Act, 2005 2were celebrated for recognising intimate partner and in-law violence. But the Act, like many laws, operates on a narrow imagination of what “family violence” looks like. It leaves behind those who suffer silently in relationships that don’t fit legal templates: adult children abused by parents, elderly parents harmed by children, siblings controlling or injuring one another, and caregivers mistreating those they’re meant to protect.
This paper seeks to explore an important and often invisible question: What happens when harm comes from a family member the law doesn’t think of as an abuser? By mapping legal gaps, power dynamics, and lived experiences, this research urges a serious rethinking of how Indian law defines and responds to abuse within families beyond the institution of marriage. 1 Staff Reporter, Hyderabad Man Arrested for Locking Brother in Storeroom, The Hindu (Apr. 20, 2023), https://www. thehindu. com/news/hyderabad-lockup-case
2 The Protection of Women from Domestic Violence Act, No. 43 of 2005, § 3, India Code (2005).
Purpose of study: The purpose of this research is not only to address a legislative gap, but also to confront a far deeper discomfort the idea that family, by default, protects. This paper questions why Indian law continues to define “domestic violence” within narrow frameworks of marriage or cohabitation while turning away from equally devastating abuse inflicted by those we are taught to trust by blood, duty, or custom such as siblings, adult children, in-laws, grandparents, grandchildren, caregivers, or extended relatives. This study also seeks to study the failure of legal language to account for lived realities. How do you report your brother abusing you for years for property, or your son isolating you from the outside world under the guise of care? What do you call it when violence exists without bruises, and trauma thrives behind family photographs?
When the law lacks words, victims often lack paths. The objective of this research is to push both law and society to confront uncomfortable truths: that familial abuse can be manipulative, systemic, and lifelong even when it falls outside legal checkboxes. It intends to explore why that kind of abuse seldom even reaches court, how victims are failed by a combination of laws and social conditioning, and what alternate models of protection can be envisioned, legally, institutionally, or as a community. Ultimately, this research is not simply about expanding categories of abuse, it is about reconceptualizing what is harmful and whose suffering is seen as worthy of legal attention. This paper wants to shift the question, "Is this really abuse? " with, "Why haven't people thought of this as abuse?
" Literature Review: • Domestic Violence, 21 Georgetown Journal of Gender and the Law 253 (2020). The 2020 volume of The Georgetown Journal of Gender and the Law provides a thorough outlook into domestic violence effects on the law in United States, providing information on both where we have come from, and where we continue to exclude certain segments. The article uses the term “domestic violence” with a place in context of intimate partner violence, though it understood that abuse is not limited to a spousal or romantic relationship but also includes siblings, parents, or other people living in the same household. The journal reflects on the discourse around federal laws, especially the Violence Against Women Act (VAWA), and how subsequent years have introduced protections for underserved communities, such as LGBTQ+ individuals, immigrant women, and native Americans in particular.
For LGBTQ+ survivors, the 2013 reauthorization and expansion of VAWA included non-discrimination provisions, even though there remains a lack of enforcement and access to services. The results of the National Coalition of Anti-Violence Programs indicate that in 2017 there were more than 2,000 reports of intimate partner violence by LGBTQ+ people. The article also describes how male survivors and LGBTQ+ survivors deal with complex situations in court and in the support systems, especially when they use various legal defenses such as Battered Woman Syndrome (BWS). Courts/juries fail to see the non-heteronormative power imbalance, and same-sex relationships lack physical vulnerability, further ending in a legally unjust result.
In conclusion, the journal emphasizes that while domestic violence frameworks have broadened, significant legal and cultural biases still exclude survivors who are outside of the 'traditional' heterosexual spousal model - a clearly evident gap in the Indian context. • Ivan Y. Sun, Police Response to Victims of Domestic and Non-Domestic Violence, 29 J. Health & Hum. Servs. Admin. 145 (2006), http://www. jstor. org/stable/25790685 officer's awareness of the specific vulnerabilities present in cases of domestic violence, which was reflective of the more supportive behaviours in such cases. Sun also examines the role of social and professional factors in police officers' behaviour.
He found that officers from community policing units and with more education were more likely to provide unsolicited help to victims; by contrast, victims from economically disadvantaged groups received comparatively much less attention, also highlighting an ongoing lack of equity in victim response based on class. Overall, the results of the study are useful not just for understanding police behaviour but for illuminating how the attitudes of law enforcement can support or oppose the invisibility of certain forms of abuse; especially where the victim-offender relationship does not fit neatly within this traditional dynamic. While this paper primarily examines policing in the US, its relevance and applicability for jurisdictions like India, where institutional responses to nonspousal domestic abuse are highly variable and underdeveloped, is significant.
Research Methodology: This research utilizes a qualitative socio-legal approach that blends doctrinal legal methodology with interpretative and thematic studies of legal instruments, literature and accounts of lived experience. The research attempts to understand familial abuse outside of a spousal context and specifically familial abuse that involves siblings, adult children, a parent, in-laws, grandchildren, caregivers and extended family members. This research begins with a consideration of Indian legal frameworks, including legislation such as the Protection of Women from Domestic Violence Act, 2005, the Indian Penal Code and the Maintenance and Welfare of Parents and Senior Citizens Act, 2007. These various elements will be critically considered to contend with current laws in terms of what they consider, include, exclude, and define regarding non-spousal forms of familial abuse.
A comparative legal lens is also used to explore how other jurisdictions have begun conceptualizing recognition of broader forms of domestic and familial violence and to trace and understand the gaps within India in a contextual, global way, particularly the UK, Australia, and Canada.
Findings
Domestic violence, in the legal sense, refers to abuse be it physical, sexual, verbal, emotional, or economic that occurs in a domestic context, usually involving individuals in an close relationship. In India, the primary statute dealing with domestic violence is the Protection of Women from Domestic Violence Act, 2005 (PWDVA). Section 3 of the PWDVA 3describes domestic violence, which includes verbal, emotional, and economic abuse going beyond physical abuse. Despite its progressive use of language, however, the law remains primarily focused on spousal and matrimonial abuse. This restrictive approach has created a significant gap. Abuses from adult children, siblings, parents, parents-in-law, even grandchildren and caregivers often get overlooked.
Section 2(f) of the PWDVA defines a "domestic relationship" as having lived or living together in a shared household, and if related to the other party by blood, marriage or adoption. Courts have, however, overly restrictive in their interpretations, primarily concerned with spousal or matrimonial abuse or co-residency in a household as defined in the PWDVA. In Sujata Madhukar Kale v. State of Maharashtra (2020), 4the Bombay High Court interpreted the principle that a sister-in-law who lived elsewhere could not be prosecuted under the PWDVA, demonstrating the ability of legal interpretation to deny victims access to the law. The lived experiences also demonstrate this absence of recognition.
In a case reported in 2022 out of Lucknow, a 67-year-old widow was allegedly confined in a room by her own son and daughter-in-law, and not able to eat, all due to their desire for control of the property. This was a widely reported issue, and yet the police were only able to register the case based on IPC sections pertaining to 323, and 5065. The elderly widow did not have access to remedies provided by the PWDVA, because the abuse was not by a spouse or partner. Likewise, the Maintenance and Welfare of Parents and Senior Citizens Act, 2007 6applies only to the financial maintenance and shelter of elderly parents, and does not explicitly include emotional, verbal or psychological abuse. The Act provides no enforcement mechanism 3 The Protection of Women from Domestic Violence Act, No. 43 of 2005, § 2(f), § 3, India Code (2005).
4 Sujata Madhukar Kale v. State of Maharashtra, 2020 SCC OnLine Bom 240.
5 Indian Penal Code, 1860, §§ 323, 506.
6 The Maintenance and Welfare of Parents and Senior Citizens Act, No. 56 of 2007, India Code (2007).
allowing for non-physical forms of abuse to incur consequences, while these forms of elder abuse are occurring far more frequently and have more detrimental effects over time. In HelpAge India’s 2022 report on 7elder abuse, 47% of elderly individuals reported abuse, and of those who reported, 57% named their sons as the main abuser, while 23% named their daughters-in-law. That being said, of the individuals who reported abuse in that survey, only 11% took any legal step. Emotional neglect and disrespect were noted as the most common forms of elder abuse, but these occurrences rarely match what is currently recognized by political and contemporary law as violence in the prosecutable sense.
Globally, statutory provisions like the Domestic Abuse Act, 2021 (UK); 8the Family Violence Protection Act, 2008 (Victoria, Australia); 9and laws found in Canada’s Criminal Code10, provide extensive legislative support for familial abuse across many different types of relationships. Although there is variation in statutes, together they demonstrate a growing awareness of abuse occurring beyond marriage. In India, legal recognition for familial abuse is limited to some provisions found scattered across the IPC, and in personal law11. There is no effective statute or an explicit acknowledgment of familial abuse occurring outside the spousal context.
Moreover, resources such as shelter homes, legal aid cells, and police instructions are mostly ill-equipped to handle complaints about abuse from siblings, adult children or in-laws, unless the abuse fits with existing legal categories such as dowry harassment and justifiable matrimonial cruelty. These findings reveal that India’s legal infrastructure currently lacks the depth and flexibility to understand and address abuse from non-spousal family members even when such abuse is deeply traumatic and long-lasting. Discussion: If the law is meant to be in place to protect the vulnerable, why do so many survivors of familial abuse fall victim to it? This question feels particularly pressing, especially when you consider
7 HelpAge India, Home Care or Neglect? 2022 Elder Abuse in India Report (2022), available at
https://www.helpageindia.org.
8 Domestic Abuse Act 2021, c. 17 (U.K.).
9 Family Violence Protection Act 2008 (Vic) (Austl.).
10 Criminal Code, R.S.C. 1985, c. C-46 (Can.).
11 Donna Coker, Coercive Control and the Domestic Violence Offense, 85 Geo. Wash. L. Rev. 101 (2017).
how limited our legal frameworks are, coupled with the problematic nature of our social norms. Internationally, countries like Australia, Canada, and the UK have significantly tried to broaden the understanding of familial violence. The Family Violence Protection Act, 2008 of Australia recognizes that violence can be perpetrated not only through a spouse, but also through a child, a sibling or even a relative that does not live in the same house. Canada’s Criminal Code recognizes “intimate partner violence” and broader “family violence” up to a level of aggravated sentencing factors. Conversely, the 2021 Domestic Abuse Act in the UK12 identifies abuse by those in a “personally connected” relationship, and not just someone you are married to.
It is easy to see how these other countries, while slowly, have moved away from the understanding of family violence as only between couples and have begun to at least recognize the complexity and potential for harm created by familial relationships. A striking example is the case of R v. Khan (2016) 13before the New South Wales Supreme Court. The accused was convicted for years of coercive control, threats, and physical violence directed not at a partner, but at his elderly parents and younger sister. The court's decision was significant because it acknowledged the psychological trauma inflicted within the family beyond spousal abuse. It showed that power dynamics between siblings and children-parents can be just as damaging, and that laws can be designed and more importantly, enforced to reflect this reality.
Unlike the Indian framework, these global legal systems have slowly begun to dismantle this romanticised view of the family but to get a better assessment of where India stands, it is instructive to see how abuse presents itself on the ground, and the responses, or lack thereof from institutional actors and the state. The Hindu reported a case in 2021 of a 32-year-old woman, from Bengaluru, who charged each of her two older brothers for over a decade; they stopped her from working, curtailed her social contacts, and seized her salary periodically. Her complaint to the police was dismissed when the police stated that "no law existed for this kind of sibling matter. " This is not an anomaly but reflects how institutional responses tend to trivialise non-spousal abuse.
12 Domestic Abuse Act 2021, c. 17 (U.K.).
13 R v. Khan, [2016] NSWSC (Austl.).
What's even more alarming is the lack of any trained people in the justice system who are able to identify this type of abuse. 14The lack of any training modules for protection officers under PWDVA, or even for police officers dealing with family disputes, allows for “moral” policing, rather than legal action. And this gap is often exploited as abuse can be recast as “family quarrels”, thereby insulating the abuser. On the way forward, the legal system in India needs to have more vision beyond adding more punishment. There needs to be start in structural reform: • Creating a new legal definition of “intrafamilial abuse”, distinct from “domestic violence” as currently understood.
• Yearly mandatory training for judicial officers and protection officers, on sensitizing cases dealing with siblings, grandchildren, caregivers, and others • Establish a pilot mental health-cum-legal clinics at a district level that can provide interdisciplinary assistance for victims of familial abuse. • Amending the Indian Evidence Act 15to include presumptions in favour of vulnerable victims when there is a clear pattern of familial isolation, coercion, or financial dependency. Practical Implications The implications of this study have practical importance. This is particularly true in regards to how we think about family, violence, and the law itself.
If the legal definition of domestic violence were to be expanded beyond spousal abuse to include abuse by siblings, in-laws, adult children, grandchildren, caregivers, and extended family members, numerous survivors from our research who fall outside of the ambit of legal protection could be recognized and validated; they are not discarded cases, they are simply invisible with respect to the current law. The change would also be meaningful in respect of more than just legal text; the change would be a message regarding its application and interpretation. The police would have more clarity in their mandates regarding such cases, legal aid services could offer assistance more
14 Domestic Violence, 21 Georgetown Journal of Gender and the Law 253 (2020).
15 Indian Evidence Act, No. 1 of 1872, § 114, India Code (1872).
objectively, shelters and counselling centres could contribute in an open-minded manner to the variety of family abuse, legal education and judiciary training would be forced to broaden their understanding of domestic violence from spousal violence to examine a variety of abuse that fall under the umbrella of family violence and states social welfare programs would react and adjust to a wider and different understanding of abuse. In the long term, I could see this potentially leading to broader applications of justice and call into question the ongoing social conception of what the “safe home” is. Research Limitation: While this research aims to address an unaddressed area of study within the contexts of family law and the field of domestic violence, there are some important limitations that must be recognized.
First, due to data and national statistics not being readily available in India on nonspousal familial abuse, particularly then use of siblings, in-laws, grandchildren, and caretakers as abusers, most of the analysis needed to be done with secondary sources, anecdotal or casebased studies rather than monumental empirical studies. This formally limits the findings. Second, there was a comparative lens included, to compare and study other countries’ legal provisions for familial abuse, but is limited by the fact that cultural systems and legal systems differ so much, making it hard to argue for transplantable reforms. Additionally, this research was done with time restrictions and not on field interviews, survivor's testimonies, or using police reports which could have provided richer, first-hand perspectives.
The paper has examined some of the social and structural implications of legal exclusion of abusive acts believed to be familial but did not deeply, or acknowledge how the long-term impacts of policy and psychology would be an outcropping of this type of abuse. There is an opportunity for future work to expand this study further engaging with cross-disciplinary lenses (i. e. mental health, public policy, or gender theory) to further contextualize the problem at hand. Conclusion: In our collective imagining, we envision the home as a site of love, protection, and safety – a safe haven in which we are protected from the cruelties of the world. However, this presumption is not the case for everybody. For many, the home is the site of sustained violence, degradation, and fear.
What compounds this even more is that when the violence is not a spouse, but a sibling, an adult child, a daughter-in-law, or a grandchild, the silence imposed by the law is deafening. This research began with a simple question: why does law take a domestic violence definition limited to spousal relationships, given that lived realities demonstrate otherwise? This paper has challenged legal definitions not only to increase the legal vocabulary, but to demonstrate just how mainstream normative ideas of what 'family' and 'violence' mean are situated within Indian law. he assumption that familial love is a given, that blood relations are inherently safe, allows a wide spectrum of abuse to remain invisible and therefore, unaddressed. Law has always been a product of the times, reflecting the social structures it operates with.
Law can also be a disruptor —disrupting the means of social control and challenging the hierarchies and silences it has historically accepted. More than being about expanding victimhood, recognizing non-spousal familial abuse is about recognizing the complexity of relationships and power among people. It is about realizing that protection should not be selective. We are seeing slow, but significant, global shifts countries such as Canada, Australia, and some U. S. states including family members outside of romantic partnerships in their domestic abuse frameworks. While these frameworks are not perfect, they are shifting. If it truly wants to build a justice system representative of its social realities, India too, must engage in similar shifts. What is needed is not simply a legal change but a change in our thinking: we no longer think of the family as safe by default.
Law needs to get to a place where we recognize the truth that harm within the home does not always happen because of the husband. Until then, far too many survivors will suffer, not just from the abuse but from a legal system that refuses to see them.