Title: Domestic violence laws in India and the discourse around fabricated cases: implications for women's human rights

Authors: Pooja Satyogi

Addresses: School of Law, Governance and Citizenship, Dr. B.R. Ambedkar University Delhi, Delhi, India

Abstract: India is a signatory to the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW) and has attempted to ensure that legislative and judicial reforms work toward ending violence against women. Yet, as this paper will show, it is often the institutions of the state that compromise the full reach of the law by targeting and maligning women who use the law to secure their lives. In this contrastive field of increasing legislation to secure women's human rights and doubting women's intention when they do work with the law, lies the fate of the litigious Indian women. This article will delineate how the Indian judiciary has tended to frame litigious Indian women as fabricators of fake cases and how these framings work towards diluting the stringent provisions of laws safeguarding women's lives and human rights.

Keywords: human rights; domestic violence; India; law; policy; protection of women; discrimination; South Asia; family; judicial reform; backlash against women.

DOI: 10.1504/IJHRCS.2024.137721

International Journal of Human Rights and Constitutional Studies, 2024 Vol.11 No.2, pp.154 - 168

Received: 06 Oct 2022
Accepted: 17 Oct 2022
Published online: 04 Apr 2024 *