The Bombay high court has come to the aid of an elderly couple from Mumbai who were dragged into a domestic violence case by their estranged daughter-in-law who has never lived with them.

In an important ruling, Justice Bharati Dangre said a victim can invoke the special law against the accused only if currently she is, or at any point in time has been, in a domestic relationship with them.

In the current case, the parents said that since they did not approve of the inter-caste marriage of their son, they had not attended the wedding or lived with him and his wife, or were even on visiting terms with them.

The court said if a woman is “aggrieved by the conduct of the husband, there is no impediment in proceeding against him under provisions of the Domestic Violence (DV) Act. However, roping in (of his parents) when she has never shared any household with them and was never in a domestic relationship with them amounts to a clear abuse of the process of law,” said Justice Dangre.

The court said the woman’s contention that provisions of the DV law can be invoked even if there is no domestic relationship was “totally misconceived”. The court said the DV law could not have been applied to the parents and struck down proceedings issued against them by the magistrate.

The woman said she had filed the DV case against her in-laws as they had never accepted her and had instigated her husband to file for divorce.

The court pointed to the definition of the term “aggrieved person” which “covers any women who is, or has been, in a domestic relationship with the accused and who alleges to have been subjected to domestic violence”.

The judge further cited the definition of “domestic relationship” under the DV Act which “covers a relationship between two persons who live or have, at any point in time, lived together in a shared household, when they are related by blood, marriage, or through a relationship in the nature of marriage, adoption or are family members living together as a joint family.”

The couple’s son and wife got married in 2004 and have two children. According to the parents, they did not approve of the inter-caste and inter-state marriage and had not maintained any relationship with their son’s family. The son and his family lived separately in Kharghar and they were not on visiting terms. The relationship between the son and his wife broke down and he filed for divorce. Last year, the woman filed the DV case in a Panvel court against her husband and in-laws seeking maintenance, residence and compensation.

The parents claimed that they were unnecessarily dragged into the case on the basis of frivolous allegations.