Controlling Salary, Withholding Money, or Selling Assets: Recognising and Proving Economic Abuse

Abstract

Domestic violence is popularly understood as a physical act — a slap, a shove, a blow. This understanding, though widely held, is incomplete. A significant proportion of intimate partner and family abuse in India leaves no visible mark at all. It appears instead as a locked joint account, a salary slip the wife is never shown, a car or piece of land quietly sold without her knowledge, or jewellery gifted at marriage that never finds its way back to her. This is economic abuse: the use of money, assets, and financial control as instruments of coercion within a domestic relationship, where the facts support such a finding.

This article examines the statutory recognition of economic abuse in India, principally under Section 3 of the Protection of Women from Domestic Violence Act, 2005 (“the DV Act”), and traces how courts have approached acts such as withholding salary, denying maintenance, and disposing of a spouse’s assets or stridhan. It evaluates the evidentiary and procedural hurdles that make economic abuse difficult to prove in practice, and closes with suggestions for reform.

Introduction

Economic abuse is often the most invisible form of domestic violence and, paradoxically, one of the most disabling. A woman who is denied access to income or assets is frequently unable to leave an abusive household, retain independent legal counsel, or sustain herself and her children while litigation is pending. Financial dependence becomes the mechanism that keeps the victim tethered to the abuser long after the will to leave has formed.

This article traces how Indian courts have interpreted acts such as withholding salary, denying maintenance, and disposing of a spouse’s assets or stridhan as forms of domestic violence capable of falling within the DV Act, while emphasising throughout that economic abuse — like other forms of domestic violence — turns on the specific facts, ownership, and circumstances of each case, and is not established merely because a financial dispute has arisen within a marriage.

What Is Economic Abuse in India?

Economic abuse is recognised as a form of domestic violence under Section 3 of the Protection of Women from Domestic Violence Act, 2005. It can include deprivation of maintenance, stridhan, property, and other economic resources, depending on the facts of the case. Explanation I to Section 3 of the DV Act defines economic abuse to include the deprivation of all or any economic or financial resources to which the aggrieved person is entitled under law or custom, whether payable under a court order or otherwise, and resources that she requires out of necessity. This is understood to cover household necessities, stridhan, property jointly or separately owned, and payments required under any maintenance order. It also extends to restricting continued access to a shared household and to resources the aggrieved person would ordinarily be entitled to use.

Economic abuse under the DV Act is a distinct statutory category, not a synonym for every financial disagreement within a marriage. Whether particular conduct qualifies depends on facts such as ownership of the asset in question, whether the aggrieved person was legally entitled to the resource, and whether the conduct was directed at depriving her of something she needed or was owed. Economic abuse under the DV Act and criminal cruelty under the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita, 2023 are overlapping but distinct legal concepts, addressed further below.

What Does Section 3 of the Domestic Violence Act Say?

The DV Act was enacted to remedy a long-standing gap in Indian law: before 2005, a woman facing non-physical cruelty within her home had virtually no dedicated civil remedy and had to rely almost entirely on the criminal provision against matrimonial cruelty. Section 3 of the Act broadened this understanding considerably, defining “domestic violence” to include not only physical and sexual abuse, but also verbal, emotional, and economic abuse.

Read together with Explanation I, these provisions mean that a range of controlling conduct is capable of qualifying as economic abuse, depending on the facts. Taking control of a spouse’s earnings, preventing her from accessing her own income, or depriving her of financial resources to which she is legally entitled may constitute economic abuse under Section 3 of the DV Act. Cancelling access to bank accounts or credit instruments without justification, or refusing to return jewellery and gifts given at the time of marriage, can likewise support such a claim. Where the resource in question already belongs to the woman herself, however, a simple refusal to hand it over to another family member is not, without more, automatically economic abuse — the analysis turns on entitlement, control, and deprivation, not on the bare existence of a financial dispute.

How Is Economic Abuse Different From Criminal Cruelty?

Economic abuse frequently overlaps with, but is not identical to, criminal cruelty. The offence formerly contained in Section 498A of the Indian Penal Code, 1860 is now substantially reflected in Sections 85 and 86 of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita, 2023 (“BNS”), which came into force on 1 July 2024. Section 85 BNS provides the offence, while Section 86 BNS defines “cruelty” to include wilful conduct likely to cause grave injury to a woman’s mental or physical health, as well as harassment aimed at coercing her or her relatives into meeting an unlawful demand for property or valuable security. Persistent, wilful withholding of a wife’s earnings, or coercive demands connected to dowry or property, may, depending on the facts, attract criminal liability under this successor provision.

Economic abuse under the DV Act and criminal cruelty under the BNS are overlapping but legally distinct concepts. The DV Act provides a protective and remedial framework before the Magistrate, including protection, residence, monetary, and compensation-related reliefs triggered by deprivation of economic resources, while the BNS requires proof, to the criminal standard, of wilful conduct amounting to cruelty. Not every act of economic abuse recognised under the DV Act will meet the threshold for criminal cruelty, and the two should not be treated as interchangeable.

Separately, where a spouse retains articles of stridhan or other property entrusted to their custody and refuses to return them despite demand, this may amount to criminal breach of trust, an offence carried forward from Section 406 of the erstwhile Penal Code into Section 316 of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita, 2023, which now defines and punishes criminal breach of trust. Indian courts have consistently treated a husband’s custody of his wife’s stridhan as that of a trustee, not an owner, making unauthorised disposal of such property both a civil wrong and, potentially, a criminal offence.

Can Withholding Salary, Maintenance or Money Amount to Economic Abuse?

Independent of the DV Act, Indian personal and criminal law recognises a right to maintenance that directly addresses economic dependency. Section 144 of the Bharatiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita, 2023 (“BNSS”), which replaced Section 125 of the Code of Criminal Procedure, 1973 with effect from 1 July 2024, allows a wife, children, or parents to claim maintenance where they are unable to sustain themselves. Section 24 of the Hindu Marriage Act, 1955 provides for maintenance pendente lite during matrimonial proceedings, and Section 18 of the Hindu Adoptions and Maintenance Act, 1956 secures a Hindu wife’s separate right to maintenance. A deliberate and unjustified refusal to pay maintenance due under any of these provisions has, depending on the facts, been treated by courts as a form of economic abuse, since it deprives the aggrieved person of a resource to which she is legally entitled. This is not the same as every instance of unpaid or delayed maintenance: a default caused by genuine incapacity to pay, or a bona fide dispute over quantum or entitlement, is not, without more, economic abuse; the characterisation turns on whether the non-payment is wilful and unjustified on the facts, not on the mere fact of arrears.

As for salary specifically: taking control of a spouse’s earnings, preventing her from accessing her own income, or depriving her of financial resources to which she is legally entitled may, depending on the facts, constitute economic abuse under Section 3 of the DV Act. The determining question is not who nominally holds the money at a given moment, but whether one spouse is being denied access to, or control over, income or resources to which she is entitled.

Constitutional Foundations

The recognition of economic dependency as a facet of gender injustice finds constitutional support in Articles 14, 15(3), and 21 of the Constitution of India. Article 15(3) permits the State to make special provisions for women, providing the constitutional basis for protective legislation such as the DV Act. The constitutional guarantee of dignity under Article 21 provides an important normative foundation for legislation addressing domestic violence and financial dependency, while Articles 14 and 15(3) support equality and protective measures for women.

Can Selling or Transferring Property Be Stopped?

The DV Act does not stop at defining economic abuse; it also equips magistrates with tools to prevent it from continuing. Section 19 allows a court to pass a residence order restraining the respondent from alienating, disposing of, or encumbering the shared household, which in practice can halt an attempted sale of the marital home while proceedings are pending. Section 20 empowers the magistrate to award monetary relief for loss of earnings, medical expenses, loss caused to property, and maintenance, payable in a lump sum or in instalments, while Section 22 permits an additional order for compensation and damages for the mental and emotional distress caused by the abuse, including its economic dimension.

Section 18 and Section 19 perform distinct functions and should not be conflated. Section 18 empowers the Magistrate to pass a protection order restraining the respondent from specified acts, such as committing further acts of domestic violence or aiding or abetting the commission of such acts. The power to restrain alienation, disposal, or encumbrance of the shared household is instead located in Section 19, which governs residence orders and, in the circumstances specified by the Act, permits the Magistrate to prevent the respondent from dealing with the shared household in a manner that would defeat the aggrieved person’s rights of residence. Together, Sections 18 and 19 give the DV Act a genuinely preventive character in appropriate cases, but they are not a general power to freeze bank accounts or to halt every disposal of property: the relief available, and whether it will be granted, depends on the nature of the asset, its ownership, the specific provision invoked, and the facts placed before the court.

Correspondingly, attempting to dispose of or encumber relevant jointly held or shared household property in circumstances amounting to economic abuse may justify appropriate relief under the DV Act — but the legal consequences of selling jointly owned property depend on title, the nature of ownership, authority to sell, whether the property is a shared household, applicable property law, any existing court orders, and third-party rights. Not every sale of jointly owned property is automatically void or amounts to domestic violence.

Can Withholding Stridhan Amount to Economic Abuse?

Krishna Bhattacharjee v. Sarathi Choudhury, (2016) 2 SCC 705

This Supreme Court decision remains the clearest judicial articulation of stridhan-related economic abuse. The appellant had been driven from her matrimonial home following dowry demands and sought the return of her stridhan under Section 12 of the DV Act. The husband argued that a decree of judicial separation had already been passed between the parties and that her claim, filed years later, was barred by limitation.

The Supreme Court rejected both defences. It held that judicial separation does not sever the marital relationship and does not, by itself, strip a woman of her status as an “aggrieved person” under the Act. More significantly for economic abuse jurisprudence, the Court held that a husband’s continued retention of his wife’s stridhan constitutes a continuing wrong: every day that the property is withheld renews the deprivation, so the limitation clock does not simply run out from the date of the original taking. The Court drew on the earlier authorities of Pratibha Rani v. Suraj Kumar, (1985) 2 SCC 370, and Rashmi Kumar v. Mahesh Kumar Bhada, (1997) 2 SCC 397, which had already established that a husband holds his wife’s stridhan only as a custodian and acquires no ownership interest in it, however long he retains it. Krishna Bhattacharjee therefore closed an important gap: it confirmed that withholding a spouse’s property is not a one-time event that a victim must challenge immediately, but an ongoing act of economic abuse that remains actionable for as long as the deprivation continues, subject always to the applicable law on limitation and the facts of the particular claim. This continuing-wrong finding was made in the context of the aggrieved person’s claim under the DV Act, and should not be read as a general ruling on the limitation period applicable to a separate criminal complaint for breach of trust under Section 316 BNS, which is governed by its own limitation rules; Rashmi Kumar itself did not decide that question. The civil remedy under the DV Act and a criminal prosecution for breach of trust remain distinct proceedings, each with its own procedural and limitation requirements, even where they arise from the same underlying facts.

What Evidence Can Prove Economic Abuse?

Rajnesh v. Neha, (2021) 2 SCC 324

Where Krishna Bhattacharjee addressed the substantive right, Rajnesh v. Neha addressed the practical difficulty of proving economic abuse and enforcing financial remedies. The Supreme Court had before it a case in which enforcement of a maintenance order had been frustrated for years by disputes over jurisdiction, incomplete financial disclosure, and an unemployed husband’s inability, or professed inability, to pay arrears.

Recognising that maintenance proceedings across the country routinely turned into a contest of unverified claims, the Court framed comprehensive guidelines under Articles 136 and 142 of the Constitution. Central to these guidelines is a standardised Affidavit of Disclosure of Assets and Liabilities, which the Supreme Court prescribed for maintenance proceedings, subject to the directions and procedural requirements applicable before the concerned court. The Court also addressed overlapping claims across different maintenance statutes, laid down criteria for computing the quantum of maintenance, and issued directions to strengthen enforcement of unpaid awards. For present purposes, the judgment is significant because it converts economic abuse from an allegation that is difficult to substantiate into a matter that can be documented: failure to make complete and truthful disclosure can expose a party to adverse procedural and evidentiary consequences, including appropriate directions or adverse inferences by the court, as subsequently applied in cases such as Kaushalya v. Mukesh Jain, (2020) 17 SCC 822.

In practice, evidence that helps substantiate a claim of economic abuse includes bank statements and salary records, the sworn Affidavit of Disclosure of Assets and Liabilities, documentation of jointly or separately owned property, records of maintenance ordered and paid or unpaid, and, increasingly, digital evidence such as screenshots of blocked transactions, denied access to net-banking, or diverted salary credits.

Important Cases on Economic Abuse

Three propositions emerge from this line of authority. First, economic abuse under Indian law is deliberately broad in principle: it can capture active conduct, such as unlawfully disposing of a jointly held asset or refusing to return stridhan, as well as passive conduct, such as declining to pay maintenance or salary that is legally due — though in every case the finding turns on the specific facts. Second, courts have consistently refused to let procedural technicalities defeat substantive claims of economic abuse; the continuing-wrong doctrine in Krishna Bhattacharjee is a direct response to the reality that financial control is exercised cumulatively, not in a single identifiable moment. Third, Rajnesh v. Neha demonstrates that the judiciary has begun treating the evidentiary problem of economic abuse as a matter requiring structural, not merely case-by-case, correction.

Denial of Maintenance as Economic Abuse: The Tripura High Court’s Approach

A useful illustration of how Section 3 operates in practice is found in Ramendra Kishore Bhattacharjee v. Smt. Madhurima Bhattacharjee, Crl. Rev. P. No. 36 of 2020 (Tripura High Court, judgment dated 10 February 2021, Chattopadhyay, J.), where a government employee had been ordered to pay maintenance under Section 20 of the DV Act and had failed to do so. The Court held, on the facts before it, that denial of maintenance allowance to which the wife was legally entitled amounted to economic abuse within the meaning of Section 3 of the DV Act, recognising denial of legally due maintenance as conduct capable of falling within the statutory concept of economic abuse under Section 3. The ruling underscores a point of general application: economic abuse under the DV Act is not confined to affirmative acts of dispossession, such as selling a shared asset. A sustained, unjustified refusal to pay maintenance ordered by a court can itself be sufficient, depending on the facts.

What Are the Main Problems in Proving Economic Abuse?

Despite this comparatively progressive framework, meaningful gaps remain between the text of the law and the lived experience of victims of economic abuse.

The Evidentiary Burden Remains Heavy

An aggrieved person alleging economic abuse must still, in practice, produce evidence of income, assets, and their diversion — material that is frequently in the exclusive possession of the alleged abuser. Salaries paid in cash, family businesses with informal accounting, and benami or family-held property are common features of Indian household finance and make it disproportionately difficult for a woman with no independent access to financial records to discharge even the threshold burden of showing entitlement and deprivation.

Digital and Indirect Forms of Financial Control Are Under-Litigated

Modern economic abuse increasingly takes digital forms: restricting access to net-banking credentials, redirecting salary credits to an account the victim cannot operate, or monitoring and vetoing every UPI transaction. These forms of control fit within the language of Section 3 but are rarely pleaded with the same specificity as the sale of a house or the withholding of jewellery, partly because victims and even practitioners are still developing the vocabulary to describe them as legally cognisable abuse rather than ordinary domestic friction.

Enforcement, Not Recognition, Is the Weak Link

As Rajnesh v. Neha itself acknowledged, the difficulty in India is less the absence of a right to maintenance or restitution and more the slow, often ineffective machinery for enforcing an order once granted. A victim of economic abuse who secures a favourable order may nonetheless wait years for actual payment, particularly where the respondent is self-employed or informally employed and able to understate income with relative ease.

What Legal Reforms Are Needed?

Three reforms merit consideration. First, family courts and magistrates should be equipped and encouraged to draw adverse inferences, in appropriate cases, from a party’s failure to produce complete bank statements, salary records, or the Affidavit of Disclosure mandated in Rajnesh v. Neha, shifting some of the practical burden away from the economically weaker party. Second, legal aid clinics and protection officers under the DV Act should be trained to identify and document digital financial control — screenshots of blocked transactions, denied access to net-banking, or diverted salary credits — as relevant, contemporaneous evidence of economic abuse, while recognising that admissibility and evidentiary weight will still depend on the applicable evidentiary rules and on how such material is produced and authenticated before the court. Third, faster, time-bound execution mechanisms for maintenance and interim relief orders, building on the enforcement directions already given in Rajnesh v. Neha, would meaningfully narrow the gap between the recognition of a right and its realisation.

Conclusion

Economic abuse rarely announces itself the way a physical assault does, yet its consequences — dependency, entrapment, and the practical inability to leave an abusive relationship — can be just as severe. Indian law, through Section 3 of the Protection of Women from Domestic Violence Act, 2005, read alongside the criminal cruelty provisions of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita, 2023, and the maintenance framework under the Code of Criminal Procedure and personal law statutes, already recognises that, depending on the facts, controlling salary, withholding money, and disposing of a spouse’s assets can amount to actionable violence. Judicial decisions such as Krishna Bhattacharjee v. Sarathi Choudhury and Rajnesh v. Neha have gone further, treating continued deprivation of stridhan as a continuing wrong and mandating financial transparency to make such claims provable. What remains is the harder task of enforcement: ensuring that a right recognised on paper reliably translates into money, and independence, in the hands of the person it was meant to protect. Bridging that gap through robust evidentiary practice, digital-literacy in identifying financial coercion, and faster execution of orders is the next necessary step in India’s response to economic abuse.

Frequently Asked Questions

1. What is economic abuse under Indian law?

Economic abuse is a statutory form of domestic violence under Explanation I to Section 3 of the Protection of Women from Domestic Violence Act, 2005. It covers deprivation of economic or financial resources a woman is entitled to under law or custom, including stridhan, jointly or separately owned property, household necessities, and maintenance.

2. Can controlling a wife’s salary amount to economic abuse?

Taking control of a spouse’s earnings, preventing her from accessing her own income, or depriving her of financial resources to which she is legally entitled may, depending on the facts, constitute economic abuse under Section 3 of the DV Act. Simply declining to hand over money that already belongs to her, without more, is not automatically economic abuse — entitlement and deprivation are what matter.

3. Can a woman recover her stridhan after separation?

Yes. Courts have recognised that continued retention of stridhan can constitute a continuing wrong for the purposes of a claim under the DV Act. This is distinct from the limitation position governing a separate criminal complaint for breach of trust under Section 316 BNS. The appropriate remedy and limitation position, in either case, depend on the facts and the nature of the property claim.

4. How can hidden income or assets be proved in maintenance proceedings?

Courts rely substantially on the standardised Affidavit of Disclosure of Assets and Liabilities prescribed in Rajnesh v. Neha. Failure to make complete and truthful disclosure can expose a party to adverse procedural and evidentiary consequences, including adverse inferences drawn by the court.

5. Can a court prevent a spouse from disposing of property?

An aggrieved person may seek appropriate protection, residence, or monetary relief under the Protection of Women from Domestic Violence Act, including relief aimed at preventing unlawful dispossession or dealing with relevant property. The exact relief depends on the nature and ownership of the asset and the facts of the case; a court does not automatically freeze bank accounts merely because a complaint is filed.

References and Citations

Statutes

The Constitution of India, 1950, arts. 14, 15(3), 21.

The Protection of Women from Domestic Violence Act, 2005, §§ 3, 12, 18, 19, 20, 22.

The Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita, 2023, §§ 85–86 (successor to § 498A, Indian Penal Code, 1860); § 316 (successor to § 406, Indian Penal Code, 1860).

The Bharatiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita, 2023, § 144 (successor to § 125, Code of Criminal Procedure, 1973), in force from 1 July 2024.

The Hindu Marriage Act, 1955, § 24.

The Hindu Adoptions and Maintenance Act, 1956, § 18.

Case Law

Krishna Bhattacharjee v. Sarathi Choudhury and Another, (2016) 2 SCC 705, indiankanoon.org/doc/124775488/.

Rajnesh v. Neha and Another, (2021) 2 SCC 324, indiankanoon.org/doc/117541087/.

Pratibha Rani v. Suraj Kumar, (1985) 2 SCC 370.

Rashmi Kumar v. Mahesh Kumar Bhada, (1997) 2 SCC 397.

Kaushalya v. Mukesh Jain, (2020) 17 SCC 822.

Ramendra Kishore Bhattacharjee v. Smt. Madhurima Bhattacharjee, Crl. Rev. P. No. 36 of 2020 (Tripura High Court, judgment dated 10 February 2021, Chattopadhyay, J.), indiankanoon.org/doc/64963259/.

Secondary Sources

Nupur Thapliyal, “Denial Of Maintenance Allowance To Wife Causes ‘Economic Abuse’ To Her Within The Meaning Of Domestic Violence Under DV Act: Tripura High Court,” LiveLaw (12 February 2021), livelaw.in.

SCC Online Blog, “Law on Domestic Violence [Protection of Women from Domestic Violence Act, 2005],” (2020), scconline.com/blog.