P.C.

The applicant-wife has challenged the order of the Court of Sessions at Greater Bombay dated 27.10.2010 holding that her application under the Prevention of Women from Domestic Violence Act, 2005 (D.V Act) is not maintainable because she was not in any domestic relationship.

2. The applicant married on 04.05.1999. She lived with her husband in the US. There are two issues from the marriage. She returned to India on 11.02.2009.

3. She filed her application under the D.V Act on 18.01.2010.

4. The learned Judge has considered that under these circumstances, she having come to India in February, 2009 and having filed this application in January, 2010, there was no domestic relationship between the parties. The learned Judge has considered the definition of domestic relationship. Of course, that relationship is defined to be one of which the party then lived and had earlier lived. That would be during the subsistence of the union between them. The application under the D.V. Act could be filed, when the marriage union subsisted. That having came to an end and long after the physical relationship came to be an end, she having returned to India, she cannot be taken to be l