The Digitalisation of Domestic Violence: Technology-Facilitated Gender-Based Abuse
*Momena Qaisar
Technological advancement has transformed interpersonal relationships, extending patterns of control, abuse, harassment and exploitation from the physical world into digital spaces. This offline–online continuum has enabled technology-facilitated forms of gender-based violence, including digital surveillance, cyberstalking, monitoring of communications and technology-enabled coercive control. However, Indian law does not comprehensively recognise such technology-facilitated abuse within domestic relationships as a distinct form of domestic violence. Instead, these acts are addressed through a fragmented framework of domestic violence, criminal and cyber laws, creating gaps in protection and legal redress. This article aims to explore and analyse the interrelationship between technology and gender-based violence specially in the realm of family violence against women in India. It develops a legal perspective on technology-facilitated gender-based violence (TFGBV) by examining Indian laws and legislation addressing family violence, domestic violence, and cyberviolence. The paper proceeds in two parts: first, it examines the legal framework governing family violence and protections available against domestic violence; and second, it evaluates the applicability and limitations of the legal framework addressing cyberviolence, with particular attention to their intersection in cases of technology-facilitated gender-based violence.
Constitutional mandate and international framework
The plain reading of the Constitution is suggestive of the fact that the Constitution does not only devise measures to weed out inequality otherwise rooted in the historical conditions but also provides for preventing the perpetuation of inequality. The concept of substantive equality and women’s rights as integral human rights has gradually been established in both domestic and international legal regimes. The Constitution of India acknowledged that initiatives were needed for the realisation of women rights and the need to compensate for or cater to the difference, disparity or disadvantage between men and women and therefore embraced a substantive equality approach aimed at securing meaningful equality in practice. This constitutional commitment is further manifested in the State’s obligation to promote and advance gender justice. It is further reinforced by the protection of privacy, personal liberty, and dignity under Article 21; and the fundamental duty to renounce practices derogatory to the dignity of women. At the core of these guarantees lies the right to live with dignity, which is central to the constitutional protection of individual autonomy, privacy, and personal liberty. Domestic violence, therefore, constitutes not merely an infringement of personal security but a violation of the constitutional promise of a life with dignity. This understanding assumes particular significance in the digital age, where domestic abuse may extend beyond the physical sphere through technology-enabled surveillance, harassment, intimidation, coercive control, and other forms of technology-facilitated violence. Such conduct can intrude upon a woman’s privacy and autonomy even within ostensibly private spaces, thereby demonstrating the need to interpret constitutional protections of equality, dignity, privacy, and liberty in a manner responsive to technology-facilitated domestic violence.
This constitutional mandate is reinforced by India’s International obligations particularly under the Universal Declaration of Human Rights adopted on 10th December, 1948 which establishes several fundamental principles such as equality, dignity, liberty, privacy, non-discrimination, security, autonomy and freedom from cruel and degrading treatment. The commitment was further reinforced by the adoption of The Convention on the Elimination of All forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW) in the year 1979 providing an international framework requiring States to eliminate discrimination against women and to promote equality between women and men.
Indian legislative framework and statutory provisions
Indian law approaches violence against women emanating from the digital sphere through a multi-layered legal framework, combining provisions of gender-specific criminal offences with cybercrimes. In principle the fundamental rights guaranteed by the Constitution mentioned earlier in this article are enforceable against the State by exercising the right to approach the Supreme Court or High court under Article 32 and 226 respectively but violence perpetrated by non-State actors in the private sphere is what needed the State’s intervention. Therefore, the enactment of the Protection of Women from Domestic Violence Act, 2005, marked a significant legislative step towards addressing and preventing domestic violence against women.
Prior to the aforementioned Act of 2005, the Parliament had come up with various special legislations and insertions of sections in the Indian Penal Code to deal with the sphere of violence against women. The Dowry Prohibition Act of 1961 is one such example which was introduced to counter the menace of dowry and the violence that unleashed on women in relation to it. The legal framework addressing violence against women was further strengthened through the insertion of Section 498A into the Indian Penal Code, 1860, by the Criminal Law (Second Amendment) Act, 1983, which criminalised cruelty inflicted upon a woman by her husband or his relatives. Subsequently, in 1986, Section 304B was introduced into the Indian Penal Code to address dowry-related deaths and prescribe stringent punishment for such offences.
Although India does not have a single comprehensive statute expressly devoted to “digital violence against women,” protection against various forms of technology-facilitated abuse is available through a combination of the Information Technology Act, 2000, the Information Technology (Intermediary Guidelines and Digital Media Ethics Code) Rules, 2021, and general criminal law. These legal provisions address, among other forms of conduct, cyberstalking, online sexual harassment, the non-consensual dissemination of obscene or sexually explicit material, impersonation, identity theft, and violations of privacy and provide varying degrees of civil and criminal remedies.
However, these provisions operate across different legal frameworks and were not designed as a unified response to technology-facilitated violence against women, particularly within domestic and intimate relationships. While existing legislation provides fragmented protection against several forms of digital abuse, it does not comprehensively recognise or address the ways in which technology can be used as an instrument of domestic violence, including digital surveillance, technology-enabled coercive control, online intimidation, and persistent harassment by intimate partners or family members.
This creates a significant grey area concerning the emergence of digital violence as an extension of domestic violence and raises questions about the adequacy of the existing legal framework in protecting women from technology-facilitated domestic abuse.
Digital domestic violence: expanding the boundaries of abuse
In conformity with CEDAW, the first draft of Domestic Violence (Prevention and Protection) Bill was formulated in 1999 by the Lawyers Collective Women’s right initiative (LCWRI). The draft sought to provide a comprehensive legal framework for protecting women from violence within domestic relationships and contributed significantly to the subsequent legislative process. After extensive consultations and revisions, the Protection of Women from Domestic Violence Bill was introduced in Parliament and was ultimately enacted as the Protection of Women from Domestic Violence Act, 2005(PWDVA). The Statement of Objects and Reasons of the Act recognised that “domestic violence is undoubtedly a human rights issue and a serious deterrent to development”. The Protection of Women from Domestic Violence Act, 2005(PWDV) inter alia provides for more effective provisions for protection of rights of women guaranteed under the Constitution who are victims of violence of any kind occurring within the sphere of family. Under the Act, domestic violence includes actual abuse or threat to abuse that is physical, sexual, verbal, emotional or economic and offers a single window legal redressal where an aggrieved woman can seek multiple reliefs in one single proceeding.
Protection of women against domestic violence represents a watershed for women's rights. The PWDV Act recognises a bundle of rights including the essence and spirit of law. These include the right of a woman to reside in a violence-free shared household,right to attain free legal services, availability of services of protection officers, custody orders, protection orders, monetary relief in terms of maintenance and compensation orders for mental torture and emotional distress, counselling, assistance of welfare experts.
While the PWDV Act provides a comprehensive framework for addressing domestic violence, technology can extend domestic abuse beyond the physical boundaries of the shared household. Digital surveillance, monitoring of phones or social-media accounts, GPS tracking and spyware can facilitate continuing control, intimidation and intrusion into a woman’s privacy and autonomy. Although the PWDV Act does not expressly refer to technology-facilitated abuse, Section 3 adopts a broad definition of domestic violence, covering conduct that harms or endangers the mental or physical well-being of an aggrieved person and includes physical, sexual, verbal and emotional, and economic abuse. It further requires the overall facts and circumstances to be considered in determining whether conduct constitutes domestic violence.
Accordingly, technology-enabled conduct may, depending on its nature, purpose and impact, fall within existing categories under Section 3. For instance, persistent digital surveillance or GPS tracking may contribute to mental or emotional harm and coercive conduct; threats involving intimate images may constitute sexual or emotional abuse where they violate a woman’s dignity or cause harm; and restricting access to digital banking or financial resources may potentially fall within economic abuse, particularly where it deprives or restricts access to resources or facilities to which the woman is entitled. Section 18 further strengthens this interpretation by expressly permitting protection orders restraining communication through “electronic or telephonic contact” and restricting dealings with bank accounts and other assets.
Digital Abuse
The Act does not expressly address such forms of digital abuse, thereby raising concerns as to whether its existing categories sufficiently encompass the distinctive nature, persistence, and wider impact of technology-facilitated domestic violence.
There has been a failure in recognising and grasping the fact that digital and gender- based cyber abuse and violence can cause prolonged psychological damage just as severe as physical violence. Technology-facilitated domestic violence refers to the use of phones, social media and the abuse of networking platforms, applications meant for surveillance, spyware and other tracking devices in order to threaten, humiliate, exploit physically, mentally or financially or monitor one’s activities. The committee on the Empowerment of women in its report on “Cybercrimes and cyber safety of women” examined the rise in cybercrimes targeting women and children including cyberstalking, sextortion, deepfakes, online harassment and financial fraud. It also noted that as per National Crime Record Bureau data between 2017 and 2022 there has been a 239% increase in cybercrimes against women.
Abusive behaviour within intimate relationships can extend into digital spaces through surveillance, cyberstalking, online harassment, threats to disseminate intimate images, and unauthorised access to digital financial accounts. However, the use of technology does not, by itself, make such conduct a standalone cybercrime. Its legal character must also be assessed in light of the domestic relationship, the purpose of the conduct, and the pattern of coercion or control involved. Where an intimate partner uses technology to monitor, intimidate, threaten, restrict autonomy, or control a woman, such conduct may constitute an extension of domestic violence. Thus, the distinction lies not merely between online and offline conduct, but in whether technology is used as a medium for an isolated offence or as an instrument of sustained coercive control within a domestic relationship.
Overt violence is more often than not accompanied by covert violence. As a matter of fact, covert violence is more widely prevalent for it is impossible to identify and quantify and remains invisible. Justice Prabha Sridevan pointed out that “the law and its officers continue to operate in the dimension of the physical only, and are consequently always searching for physical signs of injury, despite the consequences of gender-based cyber violence (GBCV) being as debilitating as crimes offline. Seeking to optimise its limited resources, law enforcement agencies would rather expend their time and energy in what they perceive to be crimes with ‘real’ harm like rape and murder.” Therefore, the operation of police officials in the dimension of physical abuse or violence needs a fresh perspective and outlook.
Bridging the legal gap: need for recognition of digital abuse under domestic violence act
The PWDV Act of 2005 was enacted at a time when we were not a part of a digitalised world therefore, it recognised abuses which threatened a woman’s physical well-being and so it does not expressly use concepts prevalent in the current digitalised sphere. On the other hand, IT Act, 2000 focuses entirely on technology-oriented offences. The gap lies right here. An act or a behaviour by the husband can be abusive without meeting the threshold of criminality. Technology can be used by the husband to exercise control or exert power over the wife by simple acts of location tracking or financial seizure of accounts which clearly is a facet of domestic abuse. The law must therefore consider how technology is being used as a tool, the nature of the relationship, the intent behind its use, the presence of coercion or abuse, and the resulting harm and impact on the victim.
Comparative legal developments have increasingly recognised technology-facilitated abuse as a dimension of domestic violence rather than merely a collection of cyber offences. Australia’s eSafety Commissioner defines technology-facilitated domestic abuse as including online harassment, threats, cyberstalking, surveillance, coercive control and financial abuse. It recognises technology as a tool of coercive control and how it is an important factor in domestic violence. The United Kingdom through its landmark legislation Domestic Abuse Act, 2021 broadened the definition of domestic abuse to include coercive and controllingbehaviour which can be digital in nature.
These approaches offer two particularly relevant lessons for the Indian context. First, Indian domestic-violence law could expressly recognise technology-facilitated coercive control as a mode of domestic violence, particularly where digital surveillance, account monitoring, location tracking, online intimidation, restriction of digital access or technology-enabled financial control forms part of a continuing pattern of abuse. Second, rather than creating a wholly separate category of “digital domestic violence”, India could adopt a technology-neutral and conduct-based definition under the Protection of Women from Domestic Violence Act, 2005, making clear that existing forms of physical, emotional, verbal, economic and sexual abuse may be perpetrated or facilitated through digital technologies. The Australian and United Kingdom models are therefore most useful not for wholesale transplantation, but for demonstrating how domestic-violence legislation can recognise the continuum between physical, psychological, economic and technology-facilitated forms of coercive control.
The key legal grey area arises from the distinction between technology-enabled cyber offences and technology-facilitated coercive control. While Indian cyber laws primarily address specific unlawful acts committed through digital technologies, domestic violence law focuses more broadly on patterns of power, control, intimidation and abuse within intimate relationships. As a result, certain forms of digital abuse may cause significant harm and function as domestic violence, even when they do not independently meet the legal requirements of a specific offence under the Information Technology Act, 2000. This gap highlights the need to consider the explicit recognition of digital abuse as a form of domestic violence under the Protection of Women from Domestic Violence Act, 2005.
Comments