01929nam a22001457a 4500999001900000008004100019100005700060245006700117260003300184300003400217520138300251773003301634942000701667952010901674  c533734d533734260615b           ||||| |||| 00| 0 eng d  aRathore, Madhhlika and Tribhuvan, Prasenjeet 961239  aThe ‘misuse’ of domestic violence law: A court ethnography  aEconomic & Political Weekly   a61(21), May 23, 2026: p.10-12  aIn recent years, a few cases of domestic violence in India have drawn the media’s attention to the alleged misuse of these laws by women. Specifically, these incidents that involved suicides by husbands attributed harassment by wives and their families by weaponising the anti-domestic violence laws (Pandey 2024; TOI 2025a, 2025b). Every such incident is followed by a keen interest and action from actors of the legal fraternity, news media, anti-feminist movement crusaders and men’s rights activists. The ecosystem spawned by these movements has generated, with some success, a discourse that demonises both the feminist movement and the laws that protect women from domestic violence. The influence of this discourse, which in itself is rooted in patriarchal cultural norms (Nigam 2022), has even painted perceptions of the judges, as is evident from the language used in some of their judgments, which vilify women “misusing” anti-domestic violence laws as opportunists, “wolves,” and terming the misuse as “legal terrorism” (Singh 2021: 194). In effect, the law that was specifically constituted to protect women from harassment and violence has been repeatedly questioned, and numerous, powerful voices have asked for a complete revocation of the law. – Reproduced 

https://www.epw.in/journal/2026/21/law-and-society/misuse-domestic-violence-law.html
  hEconomic & Political Weekly   cAR  00102ddc40709408913aIIPAbIIPAd2026-06-15h61(21), May 23, 2026: p.10-12pAR139205r2026-06-15yAR