Narrower Than It Looks: Why DV Act territorial Jurisdiction Is Tighter Than Section 125 CrPC"

 

A recurring battleground in matrimonial litigation is the courtroom itself — quite literally, which court has the power to hear the case. A recent appellate order arising out of a Protection of Women from Domestic Violence Act (PWDVA) proceeding throws sharp light on why the territorial jurisdiction clause under the DV Act is drafted narrower than its cousin provision for maintenance under Section 125 of the Code of Criminal Procedure (CrPC). Litigants, and even trial courts, often assume the two provisions operate identically. They do not, and the difference can determine whether an application survives a preliminary objection or collapses at the threshold.

The Dispute That Triggered the Question

In the underlying case, a husband challenged an order of a Judicial Magistrate First Class that had rejected his objection to territorial jurisdiction in a DV Act application filed by his wife. The wife had shown her residential address within the town where the magistrate's court was located, while the husband contended that neither party actually resided, worked, or experienced any incident of domestic violence within that town's limits — both spouses lived and worked in a different town roughly 70 kilometres away, and their children studied there too. He also pointed to police complaints she had lodged giving her address in that other town, and produced evidence that daily commuting between the two towns for her government teaching job was practically impossible.

The appellate court found that the wife had failed to demonstrate any event of domestic violence occurring within the jurisdiction where she filed the case, and that her claimed "residence" there appeared to be one of convenience rather than genuine dwelling. The order below was set aside, and the DV Act application was disposed of for want of jurisdiction — a textbook illustration of how the jurisdictional test under the DV Act operates differently from the more liberal standard under Section 125 CrPC.

Two Maintenance Remedies, Two Different Jurisdictional Tests

Both Section 125 of the CrPC and the DV Act allow a wife (among others) to claim maintenance-type relief, but the statutes deliberately use different language to define where a case can be filed. Section 126 of the CrPC states that proceedings under Section 125 may be initiated in any district where the person against whom the claim is made resides, or where the claimant or her husband resides, or where they last resided together. The words "any district" give this provision a wide territorial sweep — a wife can approach a court practically anywhere she or her husband has a residential connection, present or past.

Section 27(1) of the DV Act, by contrast, confers jurisdiction on a court within the local limits of which the aggrieved person resides or temporarily resides, or carries on business, or is employed, or where the respondent resides or carries on business, or where the cause of action arose. The phrase used is "local limits," not "any district" — a narrower geographic anchor tied to the actual limits of a particular court's territory rather than an entire administrative district.

Aspect	Section 125 read with Section 126, CrPC	Section 27, DV Act
Statutory language	"Any district"	"Local limits of which"
Geographic breadth	Broader — an entire district qualifies	Narrower — confined to a court's specific local limits
Connecting factors	Where respondent is; where claimant or respondent resides; where they last resided together	Where aggrieved person resides/temporarily resides; where she is employed or carries on business; where respondent resides/carries on business; where cause of action arose
Treatment of "temporary residence"	Not separately emphasised	Courts scrutinise whether "temporary residence" is genuine or manufactured solely to found jurisdiction
Vulnerability to forum shopping	Lower, given wider connecting factors	Higher scrutiny applied, since a bare claim of residence can be misused to select a convenient forum

 

Why "Residence" Is the Real Battleground

Much of the litigation around DV Act jurisdiction turns on the meaning of "resides" or "temporarily resides." The Supreme Court has long held that "reside" implies something more than a casual stay or a flying visit — it requires a concrete intention to remain at a place, whether permanently or for a defined purpose, and does not extend to a fleeting or engineered presence created merely to satisfy a legal requirement. Bombay High Court rulings have refined this further in the DV Act context, holding that temporary residence must be residence undertaken in the ordinary course of life — for education, employment, or similar genuine needs — and cannot be a residence artificially set up to confer jurisdiction on a chosen magistrate, since that would let a well-resourced litigant manufacture a forum simply to inconvenience the other spouse with long travel and expense.

This judicially evolved test does not have a parallel under Section 125 CrPC, where the wider "any district" language and the additional ground of "last resided together" already give the claimant considerable latitude, reducing the need for courts to closely interrogate the genuineness of a stated residence.

The Practical Takeaway for Litigants and Courts

The distinction is not a mere technicality — it decides whether a case can proceed at all. Under Section 125 CrPC, a wife has multiple wide-ranging options for the forum, making jurisdictional objections comparatively harder to sustain. Under the DV Act, however, courts are expected to test whether the connecting factor — residence, employment, business, or the incident itself — is real and substantial, not a convenient fiction. Respondents facing a DV Act complaint in a distant or unconnected forum retain a meaningful jurisdictional defence, while applicants must be prepared to substantiate genuine residence, employment, or the location of the incident with credible evidence, since bare assertions or interested affidavits may not survive scrutiny at the appellate stage.

For practitioners, the message is clear: before filing or defending a DV Act application, map every connecting factor under Section 27 against the actual facts, because the "local limits" test leaves far less room for a loosely justified choice of forum than Section 125 CrPC does.