This Article is written by Adv. Aman Chawla, Family Law Expert | Delhi High Court & Supreme Court of India Practising in Family & Matrimonial Law | Jangpura, New Delhi

Introduction

Every week, I meet parents, siblings, and other relatives of a husband who have just been named in a Domestic Violence complaint, or a cruelty case under Section 85 BNS (the provision that replaced the old Section 498A IPC), or some other proceeding filed by the wife. Their first reaction is almost always the same: shock, followed by anger, followed by one question , “Can we now file a case against her?”

My answer is never a simple yes or no, because it depends entirely on the facts. Over the years of handling these disputes in Delhi’s family and district courts, I have noticed that people jump to “let’s file something against her too” without first doing the one thing that actually protects them , getting themselves out of the case she has already filed.

This article lays out, in practical terms, exactly how a relative should think about this. Every case is different, but the framework below applies almost universally.

Step One, Always: Get Out of Her Case Before You Think About Filing Your Own

I tell every client the same thing before we discuss counter-action: your first priority is to extricate yourself from whatever case has already been filed against you. Filing a fresh case while you are still fighting to get out of hers puts you in a weak position , courts, and even your own lawyer’s strategy, will be split across two fronts. Fix your own exposure first.

The route to do that depends entirely on which law she has invoked.

If She Has Filed a Domestic Violence (DV) Case Against You

Relatives named in a DV case under the Protection of Women from Domestic Violence Act, 2005 generally have two options, depending on the stage of the case:

1. Application seeking deletion of name

If you have been named in the DV petition but there was never a genuine “domestic relationship” between you and the aggrieved wife , for instance, you are a married sister-in-law who lives separately, or a distant relative dragged in only because you share a surname , you can move an application before the same Magistrate’s court under Section 25(2) of the DV Act, read with the definition of “domestic relationship” under Section 2(f). The core argument is straightforward: the Act protects a woman from people she has actually lived with in a shared household in a relationship of consanguinity, marriage, or a relationship in the nature of marriage , not every relative of the husband regardless of whether they ever shared a household with her.

2. Quashing petition before the High Court

If deletion at the trial court stage isn’t the right fit , for example, if there are procedural or substantive defects that go to the root of the entire proceeding, or if continuing to face the case itself amounts to harassment , the remedy is a petition before the High Court under Section 528 of the Bharatiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita, 2023 (BNSS), which is the renumbered version of the old Section 482 CrPC. This is the High Court’s inherent power to quash proceedings to prevent abuse of process or to secure the ends of justice. The Supreme Court’s guiding framework here remains State of Haryana v. Bhajan Lal (1992 Supp (1) SCC 335), which lays down the categories in which quashing is appropriate , including where the allegations, even taken at face value, disclose no offence, or where the complaint is filed with a mala fide or oblique motive.

If She Has Filed a Cruelty Case (Formerly 498A IPC, Now Sections 85/86 BNS)

The strategy here genuinely differs from a DV case, and the stage of the case decides your options:

Before a chargesheet is filed: If the police investigation has thrown up clear legal lacunae , for instance, the FIR contains only a general, omnibus allegation against you without a single specific incident, date, or role , you can move the High Court directly for quashing of the FIR under Section 528 BNSS. This is a well-worn path for relatives who are named only because they share an address or a surname with the husband, without any particularised allegation against them individually. The Supreme Court’s decision in Geeta Mehrotra v. State of U.P. (Criminal Appeal No. 1674 of 2012, decided 17 October 2012) is instructive here , the Court quashed proceedings against a sister-in-law and brother-in-law precisely because the FIR contained only a “casual reference” to their names without disclosing any specific act attributable to them.

After a chargesheet is filed: Once the police have filed a chargesheet, quashing under Section 528 BNSS is still legally available if there are genuine legal grounds , but as a matter of practice, courts are far more reluctant to interfere once the investigation has concluded and material is on record. In most such situations, my advice is to move a discharge application under Section 262 of the BNSS (which corresponds to Section 239 of the old CrPC, applicable to warrant cases instituted on a police report). At the discharge stage, the court examines only whether the material placed on record by the prosecution , the chargesheet, statements, and documents, makes out even a prima facie case against you. If it does not, you are entitled to be discharged without the case ever going to trial.

One caution here: at the discharge stage, courts look at the prosecution’s material, not material filed by the defence. This is settled law, reaffirmed as recently as 2025 by the Supreme Court. So your discharge application has to be built entirely around demonstrating that the prosecution’s own record falls short, not around introducing your own version of events, which is a matter for trial, not discharge.

Step Two: When the Relative Has Actually Suffered a Wrong, They Can Pursue Their Own Remedy

Getting out of her case is defensive. The more important, and often overlooked, question is offensive: has this relative independently suffered a legal wrong that has nothing to do with being “falsely implicated”?

This is the distinction I keep coming back to with clients. The basis for a relative’s own legal action should never be “my relative was falsely named, so I’ll file something in retaliation.” Courts see through retaliatory litigation, and frankly, so do I when a client proposes it to me. The basis has to be: “Something was done to me, personally, and I am entitled to a remedy for that.”

In real matrimonial disputes, the conflict routinely spreads far beyond the husband and wife. Parents receive threatening phone calls. Elderly relatives face confrontations at family functions. False and damaging statements circulate among relatives, neighbours, or on social media. In some cases, there is actual physical confrontation. Where any of this genuinely happened, the affected relative has independent remedies available , separate and apart from whatever the husband-wife matrimonial case is doing.

Depending on the specific facts, these can include:

Defamation. If false and damaging statements have been made about a relative , to neighbours, at the workplace, to the extended family, or on social media , and you can establish the statement was made with intent to harm reputation or with knowledge that it would do so, a defamation case is available under Section 356 of the BNS, 2023 (which replaced Sections 499 and 500 of the IPC). Criminal defamation is a private complaint filed before a Magistrate under Section 223 of the BNSS; there is also the option of a civil suit for damages, which does not require proof of criminal intent and can be a faster route to a monetary remedy.

Injunction / restraint orders. Where a relative is being repeatedly confronted, followed, or harassed, a civil suit seeking a permanent or interim injunction restraining such conduct is a legitimate remedy. This is particularly relevant where the confrontations are happening at a relative’s residence, workplace, or at family and social gatherings.

Intimidation, threats, and assault. Threatening phone calls, intimidation, or extortion-type demands, and any actual physical altercation, are independent criminal wrongs under the BNS and can be reported and pursued regardless of what is happening in the matrimonial case. If a mother-in-law has genuinely been physically assaulted or has faced criminal intimidation, she is not disqualified from filing her own complaint merely because her son’s matrimonial case is running in parallel , that is her independent cause of action, arising from what was done to her.

A relative filing her own DV case. This one surprises people the most, but yes , under the current law (following the Supreme Court’s 2016 ruling striking down the “adult male” restriction in Section 2(q) of the DV Act), a mother-in-law who has herself been subjected to abuse can file her own DV complaint against the daughter-in-law. This is not a hypothetical , it is a real, and increasingly used, remedy where an elderly relative is genuinely at the receiving end of aggression rather than the other way around.

The common thread across all of these remedies is proof. Courts will not extend protection on the strength of a general, emotional narrative of “she has been harassing us.” You need dates, specific incidents, witnesses where available, and , wherever possible , contemporaneous evidence such as messages, call records, or medical documentation. The same discipline that a wife’s side is expected to bring to a cruelty complaint applies equally when a relative is the one filing.

The NRI Angle: Why This Distinction Matters Even More When the Husband Is Abroad

This issue takes on a sharper edge in NRI matrimonial disputes, and it is something I deal with regularly in my practice.

When the husband is living abroad and his parents or siblings remain in India, those relatives are often the ones physically present on the ground , receiving the calls, attending the police station summons, facing the confrontations at family events, dealing directly with the wife or her family, while the husband himself is thousands of miles away and largely insulated from the day-to-day friction. In these situations, it is frequently the India-based relatives, not the husband, who bear the brunt of both the false implication in her case and any genuine harassment directed specifically at them.

For NRI families, my advice is the same in principle but more urgent in practice: don’t wait for the husband’s case (divorce, DV response, or otherwise) to be resolved before addressing what the India-based relatives are personally facing. Their exposure and their remedies run on a separate, independent track, and delay only makes both harder to manage , evidence gets stale, witnesses become harder to locate, and limitation periods can run out.

A Practical Checklist Before You Decide to File Anything

Before advising a client to file a counter-case, I ask them to walk through this sequence:

1. Have I first addressed my own exposure in whatever case has already been filed against me , deletion of name, quashing, or discharge, as applicable?
2. Did something actually happen to me personally , a threat, a defamatory statement, an assault, intimidation , separate from the fact that I was named in her case?
3. Do I have anything beyond my own account to support it , messages, witnesses, medical records, call logs, CCTV, or contemporaneous complaints?
4. Which remedy actually fits the facts , a criminal complaint, a civil suit for injunction/damages, or in a genuine case, a DV complaint of my own?

If the honest answer to question 2 is “not really, I just want to respond to what she did to me,” that is not a legal case , that is a grievance, and pursuing it as litigation usually backfires. If the honest answer is “yes, this specific thing happened to me,” you have a genuine cause of action, and it deserves to be pursued properly, on its own footing.

Conclusion

The law does not treat a husband’s relative as automatically “the accused side” forever. A relative can be a genuine victim too , of threats, defamation, intimidation, or worse , and the law gives them independent remedies for that, entirely apart from the matrimonial case running between husband and wife. But those remedies are earned by what actually happened to that individual, not borrowed from the husband’s grievance against his wife.

If you are a relative caught in this situation , whether you need to get your name out of a DV or cruelty case, or you believe you have an independent claim arising from what was done to you , the sequencing matters, and getting it wrong can weaken both fronts. This is exactly the kind of matter where an early, fact-specific consultation makes the difference between a case that holds up and one that doesn’t.

Adv. Aman Chawla practices matrimonial and family law before the Delhi High Court, Delhi Family Courts (Saket, Rohini, Dwarka, Karkardooma, Patiala House), and the Supreme Court of India. For a consultation on your specific situation, reach out through the contact details on this website.

FAQ

Q: Can a husband’s mother file a case against her daughter-in-law?

Yes. If she has independently faced threats, defamation, assault, or harassment, she can pursue remedies including a police complaint, a civil suit for injunction or damages, a defamation complaint under Section 356 BNS, or , since the Supreme Court’s 2016 ruling widening the DV Act , her own domestic violence complaint.

Q: How does a relative get their name removed from a DV case in India?

By filing an application under Section 25(2) of the Protection of Women from Domestic Violence Act, 2005, before the same court, arguing there is no “domestic relationship” under Section 2(f) of the Act , or, in appropriate cases, by seeking quashing of the entire proceeding before the High Court under Section 528 BNSS (formerly Section 482 CrPC).

Q: What is the difference between quashing and discharge in a 498A/85 BNS case?

Quashing (Section 528 BNSS) is a High Court remedy, generally used before or shortly after the chargesheet, to strike down the FIR/proceeding itself on legal grounds. Discharge (Section 262 BNSS, formerly Section 239 CrPC) is a trial-court remedy available after a chargesheet has been filed, where the accused argues that the prosecution’s own material does not make out even a prima facie case.

Q: Is 498A now called something else?

The offence formerly under Section 498A IPC is now defined under Section 85 of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita, 2023 (BNS), with the definition of “cruelty” under Section 86 BNS, effective from 1 July 2024. The substance of the law is unchanged.

Disclaimer

This article is for informational purposes only and does not constitute legal advice or advertisement/solicitation under the Bar Council of India Rules. No advocate-client relationship is created by reading this content. Laws change and every case differs on facts , please consult a qualified advocate before acting on any information given here.