SC Extends Domestic Cruelty Law to Live-in Couples - But Only If You Can Prove You Meant to Marry

The Law Now Asks a Woman to Prove Her Own Future

Imagine two women, both beaten by the men they live with. One has a marriage certificate. The other has six years of shared rent receipts, a joint bank account and a partner who always said marriage was "not really necessary between us." Until Monday, only the first woman could invoke Section 498A.

The Supreme Court has now let the second woman in too - but on a condition that should trouble anyone who has actually watched how abuse works: she must prove "intent to marry."

The Fix and What It Doesn't Fix The

Court's reasoning is hard to argue with in the abstract. Cruelty, as Justice Karol put it, does not check a marriage certificate at the door. Denying criminal deterrence to a woman simply because she hasn't formalised her relationship treats identical suffering unequally - a straightforward Article 14 problem.

The Court also correctly separated this from the Domestic Violence Act, 2005, which offers only civil remedies like maintenance and protection orders, not the criminal deterrence that comes with 498A. But "intent to marry" is not a fact you can photograph.

It lives, if it lives anywhere, inside private conversations, half-promises and futures that were never written down. The judgment does not specify how this intent should be proven - only that the burden sits with the woman.

Who Actually Carries This Burden Here is the

uncomfortable part: the women most likely to be in a "relationship in the nature of marriage" without documented intent are often the same women with the least social and legal leverage to begin with - financially dependent, less educated, less able to produce texts, witnesses or joint property records that would satisfy a court. A woman whose partner always kept their relationship deliberately undefined - precisely to avoid any legal claim on him - is now asked to prove the one thing he made sure never to put in writing.

What This Actually Changes and What It Doesn't

The ruling is genuine progress: it closes a gap where cruelty was invisible to criminal law simply because two people hadn't signed a certificate. But it also creates a new sorting mechanism - a court will now decide, case by case, whose relationship was "serious enough" to deserve protection. That decision will often turn on evidence that mirrors class and education, not on the severity of the cruelty itself.

The Honest Verdict The

Court fixed a real injustice - protection denied for want of a certificate - but built the fix on a foundation (provable intent) that will likely under-protect exactly the women least equipped to meet it. Real progress here would pair this ruling with clearer evidentiary guidance - cohabitation duration, financial pooling, social representation as a couple - so "intent to marry" doesn't quietly become another paperwork test for the poor.