7 Domestic Violence

The statute: the Domestic Violence (Offence and Punishment) Act, 2066 (2009) — the household's violence named and coded.Definition (the Act's four heads): physical, mental, sexual, and economic/financial violence committed by one family member (the Act's defined domestic-relation circle: spouses, in-laws, the cohabiting kin) against another — the definition's breadth the Act's innovation (the economic- abuse head: deprivation of maintenance, property denial — the household's power economics criminalized).The machinery (the Act's protection-first design): the complaint to police/Local level/service agencies; protection orders (the abuser restrained), residence orders (the victim's right to stay in the shared home), interim relief, compensation orders; mandatory reporting by service- providers who encounter victims; reconciliation's possibility (with the consent safeguards) and the penalty ladder.The critique (the marks-earning analysis): the Act's promise vs. its enforcement — police non-registration of complaints (the FIR-refusal culture), the reconciliation-pressure (family- reunification bias), the order-enforcement vacuum, the victim's economic dependence, the under- reporting culture — the Nepali women's-movement's standing reform agenda (the Domestic Violence Act as the movement's statute, incomplete).