Matrimonial Cruelty — BNS Sections 85–86
What most people assume
Cruelty by a spouse is treated through the same criminal provision, whichever spouse commits it.
What the law actually says
Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita (BNS) sections 85 and 86 — carrying forward the earlier IPC section 498A — specifically criminalise cruelty by a husband or his relatives against a woman. "Cruelty" is defined to include conduct likely to drive a woman to suicide or grave injury, and harassment linked to unlawful demands for property or valuable security.
Who this applies to
- A woman who is married, in relation to cruelty by her husband or his relatives
Why it exists
The provision responds to a historically documented pattern: dowry-linked harassment and cruelty against wives inside the marital home, often invisible to outsiders and difficult to prosecute under ordinary hurt/assault provisions. It was designed to name and criminalise that pattern specifically.
Where the asymmetry is
The offence, as drafted, identifies the husband and his relatives as the class of persons who commit it and the wife as the person it protects. There is no equivalent BNS provision criminalising the mirror conduct — cruelty by a wife or her relatives against a husband — as a specific matrimonial-cruelty offence.
What this does not mean
That harmful conduct by a wife against a husband is lawful. General offences covering hurt, criminal intimidation, defamation and similar conduct can still apply to that behaviour. What is sex-specific is this particular matrimonial-cruelty offence: it is defined as cruelty by a husband/his relatives against a wife, not as a spouse-neutral offence.
Safeguards / limits
- The Supreme Court has repeatedly cautioned against automatic or mechanical arrest in cases under this provision (see Arnesh Kumar v. State of Bihar) and required a documented basis before arrest
- General criminal offences remain available to a husband subjected to comparable conduct, even without a dedicated mirror provision
Ground reality
This provision is also the one most frequently discussed in public debate about misuse — usually alongside the Supreme Court’s own safeguards against automatic arrest. Holding both facts at once — the provision is sex-specific by design, and the Court has built procedural safeguards around how it is enforced — is the accurate picture. Neither fact cancels the other out.
Why the reader needs to care now
Whether you are trying to understand your own exposure inside a marriage, or trying to understand what a woman close to you can and cannot invoke, the sex-specific wording of this section is a structural fact worth knowing before a dispute — not during one.
Related cases
Primary source
Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita, 2023 — India Code →
LAW CHECKED · 08 SEPT 2026