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The saving grace in Section 3 of PWDVA is that it's final clause says that the events have to be seen in their totality to decide whether domestic violence has taken place or not.

Above should be used by husbands during arguments to tear apart the often vague, contradictory, without-evidence allegations of wives. How? Let's say your wife has made 10 different allegations of domestic violence some of them like the following:

1. I was not given food in marital home.

2. I was forced to leave the house on DDMMYYYY date.

3. Husband is having an affair.

4. And so on...

...

10. Contents of allegation 10 ...

Allegation 1 to be proven true has to have some medical evidence of malnutrition etc, which is never provided. Regarding allegation 3, many women just put it to support their reason of leaving husband's house, but without any evidence, so it's a mere allegation. Let's say that a wife has shown some proof like a train ticket that she left the husband's house on certain date as in allegation 2.

Now if husband can argue that 9 out of 10 allegations to be without any evidence, he is already in strong position. To counter the one about leaving husband's house, he can say that wife left according to her own accord without any coercion or domestic violence done to her. The allegation 2 is actually combination of 2 statements:

1. I was forced to leave the house

2. I left the house

Now you can argue that only the second statement is true, the first isn't and wife doesn't have an iota of evidence to support the first allegation either since her other 9 allegations which could have shown that she was forced to leave the house, have fallen flat.

So husband can argue easily that the totality of allegations and evidence suggests that wife was under no force or threat to leave but she left the house out of her own free will.

It is very important to take this approach to fight DV cases, because many a time it is seen that husband's own lawyer doesn't give him support and instead may create fear or doubt in husband's mind about the outcome. Show these advocates this section and ask them how can the judge decide that domestic violence has taken place when 9 out of 10 allegations haven't been proven at all? Impress upon the court that totality of the allegations and evidences do not suggest a probability of domestic violence having taken place. In fact, the totality of evidence on record suggests that the allegations are bogus, baseless, and malicious with sole purpose to harass the husband, and claim maintenance.

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