CRIMINALIZING COERCIVE CONTROL: THE MISSING PIECE IN INDIA’S CONSTITUTIONAL PROMISE TO WOMEN

Introduction

In India today, women are often punished for exercising the very freedoms the Constitution promises them. From choosing to live independently, earning their own income, expressing themselves on digital platforms, or rejecting forced relationships, women who assert autonomy frequently face threats, harassment, social isolation, or even death. These acts of violence are often framed as isolated “crimes of passion” or “domestic disputes.” But they are far more systemic, and far more insidious. They are manifestations of what legal and feminist scholars now widely refer to as coercive control: a sustained pattern of domination that robs women of liberty, dignity, and personhood long before, and sometimes without physical violence.

Despite the guarantees under Articles 14,^[1] 15,^[2] 19(1)(a),^[3] and 21^[4] of the Indian Constitution — equality, non-discrimination, free expression, and the right to life and personal liberty, Indian law fails to address this deeply embedded form of abuse. This failure is not merely legislative; it is a constitutional betrayal. Without criminalizing coercive control, we leave women legally unprotected from the most common forms of patriarchal violence.

The Invisible Harm: Defining Coercive Control

So, what exactly is coercive control? Coined by criminologist Evan Stark, the term refers to a repetitive, dominating pattern of behavior used to isolate, surveil, degrade, and control another person — most often a woman in a domestic or intimate relationship. Coercive control includes tactics like emotional manipulation, gaslighting, financial dependency, restricting movement, denying access to friends or technology, and constant monitoring. These patterns don’t always result in bruises or broken bones, which is precisely why they so often escape the attention of police, courts, and policymakers. Stark called coercive control a “liberty crime” because it targets a person’s autonomy, not just their physical safety.

Under Indian law, the concept of coercive control finds no explicit recognition. The Protection of Women from Domestic Violence Act (PWDVA)^[5] does acknowledge forms of emotional and economic abuse, its remedies are primarily civil in nature and often difficult to enforce. On the other hand, the Indian Penal Code (IPC)^[6] is structured around discrete, tangible offences such as assault, rape, abduction, or dowry death. It is not equipped to address the insidious, cumulative patterns of control that erode a woman’s autonomy over time. This creates a legal void: a woman may be demeaned, monitored, humiliated, manipulated, and isolated for years, yet unless a discrete criminal offence is committed, the law offers little to no recourse.

What the Data Conceals

This gap is reflected in the alarming data. As per the National Crime Records Bureau (2022) report,^[7] India recorded 6,516 cases of dowry deaths and 4,963 cases of abetment to suicide of women. Over 31,000 incidents of rape were registered, and more than 83,000 women reported assault with intent to outrage their modesty. Nearly 28,656 women were abducted with the intent to compel them into marriage, often under familial or societal pressure. These numbers reflect only the most visible manifestations of violence. Beneath them lies a far more pervasive reality of coercion and control that, though deeply harmful, remains legally unarticulated and insufficiently addressed.

Case Studies: When Control Turns Deadly

This silence has fatal consequences. The murder of Radhika Yadav, a 25-year-old tennis coach from Gurugram, exemplifies the dangers of ignoring coercive control. Her father, reportedly unable to tolerate “taunts” about living off her income and disapproving of her social media presence, murdered her. This was not just a reaction to a moment of shame — it was the culmination of patriarchal control being threatened by her autonomy. When years of emotional domination failed to contain her independence, violence became the final assertion of power.

A similar dynamic played out in the case of Kamal Kaur, a digital content creator who was murdered after receiving threats from self-appointed moral vigilantes. Her online persona, deemed “obscene” by critics, became the basis for targeting her, not because of criminal behaviour, but because she defied patriarchal norms of female modesty. In a scathing critique, Senior Advocate Madhavi G. Divan described her murder as “horrifyingly Talibanesque”, emphasizing how “men can parade guns and issue rape threats on social media… but a woman who swears, defies social norms and earns a living from a bit of sleaze must be put to death.”^[8] Her words expose a chilling reality: digital expression by women is increasingly policed not just by trolls, but by societal institutions that still treat female autonomy as moral deviance. When Article 19(1)(a)^[9] fails to protect a woman’s freedom to use social media without fear of execution, it is not merely a criminal failure — it is a constitutional collapse.

In Sonam Raghuvanshi’s case, the abuse was more institutional. Despite expressing her unwillingness, Sonam was reportedly coerced into a marriage — a decision enforced not by her will, but by familial and social expectations. Afterward, she allegedly endured non-consensual sex within that marriage — an act which, under current Indian law, is not recognized as rape if the woman is over 18 and legally married.^[10] This exposes a grave legislative failure: the non-criminalization of marital rape, despite the clear violation of a woman’s bodily autonomy, dignity, and privacy under Article 21.^[11] Whatever her actions later in life, they must be understood within this broader context — where the law upholds coercive marriage while criminalizing a woman’s resistance to it. Sonam’s case is not merely a tragic personal story; it is a systemic indictment of how deeply coercive control is embedded in institutions like marriage, family, and law itself.

These cases expose a fundamental structural bias — one where the legal system safeguards male authority more vigorously than it upholds women’s autonomy and self-determination.

Coercive Control and Constitutional Jurisprudence

While the Indian Constitution guarantees liberty, dignity, and equality, these rights remain under-enforced when applied to the daily realities of gender-based domination. Article 14^[12] ensures equality before the law, but the failure to recognize coercive control as a distinct harm denies women the equal protection of law. As held in E.P. Royappa v. State of Tamil Nadu,^[13] arbitrariness is antithetical to equality. Yet arbitrary distinctions between physical and psychological violence result in legal neglect of abuse that undermines women’s autonomy over time. Article 15(1),^[14] which prohibits sex-based discrimination, is also compromised when the State tolerates coercive forms of control, including forced marriage or marital rape, that disproportionately affect women. The Supreme Court’s ruling in Anuj Garg v. Hotel Association of India^[15] emphasized that laws must avoid reinforcing patriarchal stereotypes; yet, by failing to criminalize coercion in intimate or familial relationships, the State reinforces male control as normative. Article 19(1)(a)^[16] protects the right to freedom of expression — a right violated in cases like Kamal Kaur’s, where the State failed to act against violent moral policing that led to her murder. As clarified in Shreya Singhal v. Union of India,^[17] vague notions of morality cannot override this right. Similarly, in Navtej Singh Johar v. Union of India,^[18] the Court held that constitutional morality must prevail over social morality, underscoring that law must protect the dignity and autonomy of individuals even when society resists such protection. Finally, Article 21^[19] guarantees the right to life and personal liberty, which the Supreme Court has expanded in K.S. Puttaswamy v. Union of India^[20] and Joseph Shine v. Union of India^[21] to include decisional autonomy, privacy, and dignity. Yet these rights are functionally denied to women coerced into marriage, subjected to surveillance, or controlled through economic and emotional manipulation. Without recognizing coercive control as a constitutional harm, the State reduces these rights to formal declarations rather than enforceable freedoms.

Feminist Legal Theory: Rethinking Harm

Feminist legal theorists have long argued that the law is not neutral; it reflects the power hierarchies of the society it serves. Catherine MacKinnon has noted that formal legal equality is meaningless if women remain substantively subordinate in their homes and relationships.^[22] Carol Smart warns that the law often resists recognizing forms of abuse that fall outside male-coded norms of violence.^[23] Martha Nussbaum’s Capabilities Approach adds that dignity is not just the absence of violence — it’s the presence of meaningful freedom.^[24]

Global Responses: Lessons from Other Jurisdictions

Globally, democracies are responding to this realization by legally recognizing coercive control. The United Kingdom’s Serious Crime Act^[25] criminalizes coercive or controlling behaviour within intimate or family relationships. Scotland’s Domestic Abuse (Scotland) Act^[26] goes even further, treating psychological abuse and emotional manipulation as legally punishable forms of domestic violence. In the United States, several state-level protection orders have recognized coercive control as a distinct threat to liberty, and federal civil rights frameworks have been used to respond to prolonged patterns of non-physical abuse.

Moving Beyond Criminalization

However, legal scholars warn that criminalization alone is not enough. As Gibbon & Buxton-Namisnyk observe in their analysis of the new coercive control offence in New South Wales, “the denunciatory effect of criminalising coercive control may ultimately be undermined if police and courts remain ill-equipped to identify and prosecute non-physical forms of abuse.”^[27] Similarly, McPherson critiques the global tendency to over-rely on physical harm thresholds and calls for a deeper shift: “The theory of coercive control challenges the legal reliance on physical harm as a threshold for intervention, demanding recognition of freedom-denying behaviours.”^[28] In a historical reflection, Zora Simic argues that coercive control is not new, only newly acknowledged: “Historicising coercive control reveals it is not a modern invention but a modern recognition of long-tolerated inequalities.”^[29] These academic insights reveal that coercive control is not just a legal problem — it is a theoretical and interpretive challenge that requires the law to shift from an event-based model to a pattern-based framework of harm.

Charting a Legal Way Forward

India, however, remains legally stagnant. Even where laws like the PWDVA exist, enforcement is inconsistent, underfunded, and shaped by patriarchal interpretations of what qualifies as “real abuse.” The newly enacted Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita (BNS),^[30] like its predecessor, the IPC — continues to focus on isolated criminal acts, leaving coercive control entirely unaddressed. In this fragmented legal landscape, unless abuse results in visible injury or death, victims are left without remedy — often until it is too late.

What India urgently requires is a comprehensive legal framework that explicitly defines, names, and criminalizes coercive control. This could be achieved either by amending the BNS to include coercive control as a standalone offence, or through the introduction of dedicated legislation. Such a law must recognise patterns of psychological, economic, and behavioural control as criminal conduct — not as mere “domestic issues.” It must equip law enforcement with the training to identify non-physical forms of abuse, criminalize marital rape and forced marriages, and extend protection to non-marital and live-in relationships, in line with the Supreme Court’s recognition in D. Velusamy v. D. Patchaiammal.^[31]

Conclusion: From Promise to Protection

It is imperative that the law reflect not merely the text, but the transformative spirit of the Constitution. Yet, as long as women in India continue to be murdered for expressing themselves on digital platforms, penalized for exercising professional autonomy, or subjected to violence and coercion for asserting their constitutionally protected rights, Articles 14,^[32] 15,^[33] 19,^[34] and 21^[35] remain largely illusory — existing more in form than in substance. These provisions, which promise equality, non-discrimination, freedom of expression, and personal liberty, signify dignity and autonomy only for those whom the legal system deems worthy of protection. For many women, especially those who defy patriarchal norms, these rights remain aspirational rather than enforceable.

In the words of Ela Bhatt, “We not only want a piece of the pie, we also want to choose the flavor, and to know how to make it ourselves.”

Until the law protects a woman’s right to choose the flavor — of her life, her career, her marriage, her voice, her will — it will continue to betray the very people it was meant to empower.

References

1. Constitution of India, art 14 ↑
2. Constitution of India, art 15 ↑
3. Constitution of India, art 19(1)(a) ↑
4. Constitution of India, art 21 ↑
5. Protection of Women from Domestic Violence Act 2005 (Act No. 43 of 2005, India). ↑
6. The Indian Penal Code 1860 (Act No 45 of 1860, India). ↑
7. National Crime Records Bureau, Crime in India – 2022, Vol. I (Ministry of Home Affairs, Government of India, December 2023) https://data.opencity.in/dataset/crime-in-india-2022/resource/d4b642dc-035b-4743-8515-efd09a17c9ed/download/1701608543crimeinindia2022book3.pdf ↑
8. Madhavi Goradia Divan, ‘Chilling Speech in the Age of Social Media Influencers’ (Bar & Bench, 11 July 2025) https://www.barandbench.com/columns/chilling-speech-in-the-age-of-social-influencers accessed 15 July 2025. ↑
9. Art 19(1)(a), supra n. 3. ↑
10. The Indian Penal Code 1860 (Act No 45 of 1860, India), s. 375 ↑
11. Art 21, supra n. 4. ↑
12. Art 14, supra n. 1. ↑
13. E.P. Royappa v. State of Tamil Nadu, (1974) 4 SCC 3. ↑
14. Constitution of India, art 15(1) ↑
15. Anuj Garg v. Hotel Association of India, (2008) 3 SCC 1. ↑
16. Art 19(1)(a), supra n. 3. ↑
17. Shreya Singhal v. Union of India, (2015) 5 SCC 1. ↑
18. Navtej Singh Johar v. Union of India, (2018) 10 SCC 1 ↑
19. Art 21, supra n. 4. ↑
20. Justice K.S. Puttaswamy (Retd.) & Anr. Vs. Union of India & Ors.,(2017) 10 SCC 1 ↑
21. Joseph Shine v. Union of India, (2019) 3 SCC 39. ↑
22. Catharine A MacKinnon, Toward a Feminist Theory of the State (Harvard University Press 1989) 237. ↑
23. Carol Smart, Feminism and the Power of Law (Routledge 1989) 11, 88. ↑
24. MC. Nussbaum, Women and Human Development: The Capabilities Approach (Cambridge University Press 2000) ↑
25. Serious Crime Act 2015, (2015 c. 9.) s. 76. ↑
26. Domestic Abuse (Scotland) Act 2018 (asp 5), s 1. ↑
27. Gibbon, H., & Buxton-Namisnyk, E. (2024). The new coercive control offence in NSW: (how) will it work? Current Issues in Criminal Justice, 37(3), 348–366. https://doi.org/10.1080/10345329.2024.2388958 ↑
28. McPherson, R. (2024). Reconceptualising Domestic Abuse: The Global Push to Criminalise Coercive Control. International Journal for Crime, Justice and Social Democracy

    https://www.austlii.edu.au/cgi-bin/viewdoc/au/journals/IntJlCrimJustSocDem/2024/35.html ↑

29. Simic, Z. (2025). Seeing the Signs: Thinking Historically About Coercive Control. Women’s History Review. https://doi.org/10.1080/09612025.2025.2530251 ↑
30. Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita 2023 (Act No 45 of 2023) ↑
31. D Velusamy v D Patchaiammal (2010) 10 SCC 469. ↑
32. Art 14, supra n. 1. ↑
33. Art 15, supra n. 2. ↑
34. Constitution of India, art 19 ↑
35. Art 21, supra n. 4 ↑

(This post has been authored by Monisha Chaudhary, an Advocate at the Delhi High Court with a keen interest in constitutional law and feminist jurisprudence.)

CITE AS: Monisha Chaudhary ‘CRIMINALIZING COERCIVE CONTROL: THE MISSING PIECE IN INDIA’S CONSTITUTIONAL PROMISE TO WOMEN’ (The Contemporary Law Forum, 22 September 2025 <https://tclf.in/2025/09/22/criminalizing-coercive-control-the-missing-piece-in-indias-constitutional-promise-to-women/> date of access.