The Protection of Women from Domestic Violence Act, 2005 casts its definitions wide, but not so wide that marriage to one member of a family creates a legal relationship with every other member. In Runa Sahai Roy v. Arpita Khan & Ors., C.R.R. 941 of 2023, decided on 1 October 2026, the Calcutta High Court dismissed a revision against orders that had deleted the petitioner's in-laws from her DV Act case and declined interim residence relief. The judgment is a careful statement of a point that recurs in Delhi's magistrate courts as much as in Calcutta's: the domestic relationship under Section 2(f) must be established respondent by respondent.
The application and its narrowing
The petitioner filed her application under Section 12 of the DV Act on 15 February 2021 against her in-laws, seeking a residence order and interim protection of her right to live in the shared household. Two of the respondents sought deletion, saying they had no connection with the allegations; the trial court initially deferred the maintainability question to evidence. Then, on 14 June 2022, the Magistrate declined interim residence relief and deleted four respondents — including two who had not even sought deletion — with costs of Rs 15,000 and some adverse remarks. The appellate court removed the costs but otherwise affirmed, and the matter came to the High Court in revision under Sections 401 and 482 CrPC.
The per-respondent discipline of Section 2(f)
Justice Ananya Bandyopadhyay\'s central holding is structural. The DV Act grants relief against a "respondent" with whom the aggrieved person is or has been in a domestic relationship; the definition in Section 2(f) ties that relationship to living together in a shared household coupled with a listed connection — marriage, consanguinity, a relationship in the nature of marriage, adoption or joint family membership. Marriage into a family therefore does not blanket every member of that family with liability. The relationship must be pleaded and shown against each respondent, and here the pleadings themselves disclosed that the contesting respondents lived separately.
The Court engaged directly with Prabha Tyagi, the Supreme Court\'s expansive reading of the domestic relationship, and drew its limit precisely: the liberality lies in dispensing with continuous physical residence, not in dispensing with the relationship itself. An aggrieved person who has never shared a household footing with a particular in-law cannot conjure one from the marriage alone.
Threshold scrutiny versus trial
The revision also raised a procedural objection: should maintainability not have awaited evidence, as the trial court first indicated in 2021? The High Court\'s answer supplies the working test. Evidence is required only where a material statutory ingredient is genuinely in dispute. Where the ingredient is absent from the pleadings and the admitted facts, a trial cannot supply it, and respondents should not be detained in proceedings that cannot succeed against them. The Section 362 CrPC objection failed for a related reason: the earlier order was interlocutory, not a signed final judgment, so the later deletion altered nothing that the Code protects from alteration.
Residence rights rest on the relationship
On Section 17, the judgment is equally crisp: the right to reside in the shared household depends on a domestic relationship under Section 2(f) and cannot create one. The refusal of interim residence relief therefore stood. The Court did note that some of the lower courts\' observations about the parties\' conduct and the underlying civil dispute went beyond what the decision required — a gentle reminder that threshold orders should decide the point and no more.
Why Delhi practitioners should note a Calcutta revision
Applications under the DV Act in Delhi routinely array the entire marital family. This judgment — consistent with the approach Delhi courts take to omnibus arraying in matrimonial prosecutions — gives respondents\' counsel a clean framework: test the pleadings against Section 2(f) respondent by respondent, move for deletion where the relationship is absent on the face of the record, and resist the suggestion that only a full trial can decide the point. For aggrieved persons, the corresponding counsel is to plead the domestic relationship with specificity against each respondent — the dates, the household, the footing — because the breadth of the Act protects genuine relationships, not generalised arrays.
Frequently Asked Questions
What does Section 2(f) of the DV Act require?
A "domestic relationship" exists between persons who live or have lived together in a shared household and are related by consanguinity, marriage, a relationship in the nature of marriage, adoption, or as members of a joint family. The Court held the relationship must be established against each respondent from whom relief is sought — marriage to one family member does not, by itself, create a domestic relationship with every other member of that family.
Did the Supreme Court's decision in Prabha Tyagi not relax this?
Prabha Tyagi broadened the reading of "domestic relationship" by removing the need for continuous physical residence with the respondent. The Calcutta High Court held that this liberality does not remove the requirement itself: the aggrieved person must still show the statutory relationship with the particular respondent. Here the pleadings showed two of the respondents lived separately, and the relationship was absent on the face of the application.
When can respondents be deleted without a full trial?
Evidence is needed only where a material statutory ingredient is genuinely disputed. Where the required relationship is missing from the pleadings and the admitted facts, a trial cannot supply it — so a magistrate may delete such respondents at the threshold rather than compel them to face proceedings that cannot succeed against them.
What about the right to residence under Section 17?
Section 17's right to reside in the shared household presupposes a domestic relationship under Section 2(f); it cannot be used to create one. The refusal of interim residence relief against respondents with whom no such relationship existed was therefore upheld, though the Court noted some of the lower courts' remarks about the parties' conduct went further than necessary.