Economic abuse is explicitly recognised under the DV Act 2005 as domestic violence, yet it falls short of 'cruelty' under BNS/IPC criminal law. Analyse the legislative gap and suggest remedies.

Section 3 of the Protection of Women from Domestic Violence Act, 2005 lists economic abuse — deprivation of financial resources, household necessities and control over earnings or property — as domestic violence [1]. Criminal law's threshold for "cruelty" remains far higher, producing a mismatch between recognition and punishment.

Nature of the legislative gap

• Divergent thresholds: the DV Act treats economic deprivation as actionable per se [1], whereas Sections 85–86, BNS 2023 (replacing Section 498A IPC from 1 July 2024) require wilful conduct likely to drive a woman to suicide or cause grave injury, or harassment for an unlawful property demand [2]. Pure financial control satisfies neither limb.
• Remedial asymmetry: the DV Act offers only civil relief — protection, residence and monetary orders — with penal consequence arising mainly on breach; economic coercion therefore carries little deterrence.
• Judicial narrowing: the Supreme Court has held that financial dominance absent tangible mental or physical harm is not cruelty, describing it as the "daily wear and tear" of marriage, and has quashed "vague and omnibus" FIRs — extending the restraint begun in Arnesh Kumar v. State of Bihar (2014) on automatic arrests [3].
• No coercive-control offence: unlike the UK's Serious Crime Act, 2015, India criminalises no sustained pattern of controlling behaviour, leaving evidentiary proof of diffuse, undocumented control difficult — acutely so in NRI marriages marked by visa and income dependency.

Way forward

• Introduce a graded criminal offence of coercive control, with economic coercion as an illustration, reserving prosecution for sustained patterns.
• Strengthen DV Act machinery: full-time Protection Officers, adequate funding and time-bound monetary relief.
• Adopt the Law Commission's recommendation to make the cruelty offence compoundable with court permission after hearing the woman, curbing misuse without diluting protection [4].
• Mandate pre-litigation screening and police sensitisation for matrimonial complaints.

The gap is thus one of calibration, not of intent. A graded criminal response, coupled with a well-resourced civil mechanism, would protect genuine victims while preventing the criminal process from becoming an instrument of vendetta — advancing the equality and dignity guaranteed by Articles 14 and 21.