The Madras High Court on Thursday ordered that judicial magistrates across the State need not insist upon Domestic Incidence Report (DIR) from the designated Protection Officers under the Protection of Women from Domestic Violence Act of 2005 and thereby delay taking cognisance of applications filed by victim women.
Justices M. Sathyanarayanan and R. Hemalatha passed the order on a public interest litigation petition by advocate Sudha Ramalingam, former vice-president of People’s Union for Civil Liberties, complaining about various shortcomings in effective implementation of the Act and the need to train judicial officers as well as other stakeholders.
Accepting the submission of the petitioner’s counsel B. Poongkuzhali that the victim women could not be made to wait for months together for receipt of DIRs, the judges directed the High Court Registry to issue a circular in that regard to all judicial officers across the State after obtaining necessary orders from the Chief Justice.
In her affidavit, the petitioner had said that Section 12(1) of the Act permits every aggrieved woman to approach the magistrate concerned either directly or through the jurisdictional PO.
Nevertheless, most of the magistrates insist on DIRs from the POs before entertaining the victim’s applications and it causes huge delay, she claimed.
“Mechanical forwarding of every application to the protection officer for the preparation of the DIR is against the language and purpose of Section 12 and there is an imminent need for guidelines in this regard and training to the magistrates and the protection officers regarding the same,” she said.
Though the Act provides for disposing of applications within 60 days, in practice, it takes about three months for a magistrate to even take cognisance of the case, the petitioner claimed and urged the High Court to issue clear guidelines on the subject to the judicial officers across the State.
