Respondents in domestic violence proceedings routinely argue that the application was filed too late — that the incidents pleaded are years old and the case is barred by the one-year limitation for taking cognizance under Section 468 of the Code of Criminal Procedure, 1973. In Kamatchi v. Lakshmi Narayanan, Criminal Appeal No. 627 of 2022, decided on 13 April 2022, a bench of Justices U.U. Lalit and P.S. Narasimha closed that door. The Court held that an application under Section 12 of the Protection of Women from Domestic Violence Act, 2005 is not a complaint of an offence at all, so Section 468 CrPC — now Section 514 of the BNSS, 2023 — simply has no application to it.
The problem the case answered
Section 468 CrPC barred a court from taking cognizance of an offence punishable with imprisonment up to one year after the expiry of one year from the date of the offence. Magistrates deal with DV Act applications alongside their ordinary criminal work, and the procedural cross-reference in Section 28 of the DV Act — proceedings "shall be governed by the provisions of the Code of Criminal Procedure" — created an opening for respondents to argue that a Section 12 application filed more than a year after the last pleaded incident was dead on arrival. High Courts had divided on the point. In Kamatchi, the Madras High Court had quashed a wife's DV application on exactly that reasoning.
What the Supreme Court held
The Supreme Court reversed, and its reasoning is structural rather than technical. The scheme of the DV Act separates two very different things:
Application under Section 12
Seeks protection orders, residence orders, monetary relief, custody and compensation. No offence is alleged; no punishment can follow. It resembles a civil claim administered by a criminal court.
Offence under Section 31
Committed only when a protection order, once granted, is breached. Only at this point does a "complaint" of an "offence" exist, and only here do cognizance and limitation rules of criminal procedure attach.
As the Court put it, by the time an application is preferred under Section 12, there is no offence committed in terms of the provisions of the Act. The limitation clock of Section 468 is triggered by an offence; an application that alleges no offence cannot start it. The Court also drew on the Constitution Bench in Sarah Mathew v. Institute of Cardio Vascular Diseases (2014), which fixed the relevant date for limitation as the date of filing the complaint rather than the date of cognizance — but held that the entire framework belongs to prosecutions, not to protective applications.
Inderjit Singh Grewal distinguished
The respondent leaned on Inderjit Singh Grewal v. State of Punjab (2011), where the Supreme Court had noted the limitation argument with apparent approval. Kamatchi explains that what actually decided Grewal was that the parties were already divorced when the DV allegations were raised, so the domestic relationship itself had ended; the limitation observation was neither the ratio nor made with the benefit of Sarah Mathew. The Court also distinguished Krishna Bhattacharjee v. Sarathi Choudhary (2016), which had proceeded on the footing of a continuing offence, as addressing a different question.
What this means in practice in Delhi courts
- A preliminary objection that a Section 12 application is "barred by limitation" is no longer maintainable; the answer is Kamatchi, and Magistrates in Delhi apply it as settled law.
- Old incidents remain relevant as context. Domestic violence is frequently a course of conduct, and the application may plead the history while anchoring relief in the continuing relationship or its aftermath.
- Delay is a weight argument, not a maintainability argument. Respondents can still contend that stale, unparticularised allegations deserve little credence at the interim relief stage.
- For prosecutions under Section 31 — breach of a protection order — limitation runs from the breach, and the ordinary rules on cognizance, condonation and exclusion of time apply under the BNSS.
The BNSS transition
For proceedings governed by the Bharatiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita, 2023, the analysis carries over unchanged. The limitation chapter of the CrPC (Sections 467–473) corresponds to Chapter XXXVI of the BNSS (Sections 513–519), and Section 28 of the DV Act now operates alongside the BNSS by virtue of the general saving for references to the repealed Code. The logic of Kamatchi is indifferent to the label: an application that alleges no offence attracts no limitation, whichever procedural code supplies the machinery.
Practice note: When defending a Section 12 application built on old allegations, the productive line is evidentiary — demand particulars, confront gaps in the Domestic Incident Report, and address each head of relief on its merits — rather than a limitation objection that Kamatchi forecloses.
Frequently Asked Questions
Can a DV Act case be filed for incidents that happened years ago?
Yes, as far as limitation is concerned. The Supreme Court in Kamatchi held that no limitation period applies to the filing of a Section 12 application, because it seeks civil-style reliefs and does not allege an offence. The age of the allegations may still affect the weight the Magistrate gives them, but it is not a threshold bar.
Where does the one-year limitation actually bite in DV proceedings?
At the stage of prosecution for breach of a protection order. Breach of a protection order is an offence under Section 31 of the DV Act, and it is to a complaint of that offence that the limitation provisions of the criminal procedure code apply, computed from the date of the breach.
What was the High Court view that the Supreme Court set aside?
The Madras High Court had quashed the proceedings as time-barred, relying on Inderjit Singh Grewal v. State of Punjab (2011). The Supreme Court explained that Inderjit Singh Grewal turned on its own facts — allegations raised after a divorce decree — and pre-dated the Constitution Bench in Sarah Mathew, so it did not lay down a limitation rule for Section 12 applications.
Does this mean delay is always irrelevant in DV cases?
No. A Magistrate assessing interim or final relief can consider staleness of allegations, intervening events and the reason for delay when weighing the evidence. Kamatchi only establishes that the application cannot be thrown out at the threshold as barred by limitation.