INTRODUCTION
Imagine years, the taunts begin about the “insufficient” dowry her parents gave, about her cooking, about how she doesn’t know how to run a household. The taunts turn into threats. The threats turn into something worse. This story is not rare. It repeats itself in thousands of homes across India, often behind Picture a young woman, newly married, still learning the layout of her in-laws kitchen. Within a closed doors, often unspoken. For decades, the law that stepped in to answer this reality was Section 498A of the Indian Penal Code (IPC). Today, that role belongs to Sections 85 and 86 of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita (BNS), 2023.
As a law student, when I first read these two sections, my instinct was to compare them line by line with the old provision. But an article about law shouldn’t only be about sections and sub-sections it should be about the people those sections are meant to protect. So this piece tries to do both explain what Sections 85 and 86 actually say, and also sit with what they mean for the women whose lives they touch.
From Section 498A to Section 85: A Law With a History
To understand Section 85, you first have to understand why it exists at all. Back in the early 1980s, India was grappling with a rising number of dowry deaths and reports of women being tormented in their marital homes. Concerned about this, the Joint Parliamentary Committee reviewing the Dowry Prohibition Act flagged the growing number of dowry related deaths as a serious problem and recommended changes to criminal law to deal with both dowry deaths and ordinary cruelty faced by married women. That recommendation led to the Criminal Law (Second Amendment) Act, 1983, which inserted Section 498A into the IPC making cruelty by a husband or his relatives a criminal offence for the first time.
Section 498A went on to become one of the most talked about litigated and debated provisions in Indian criminal law. Some called it a lifeline for women trapped in abusive marriages. Others called it a tool that could be and sometimes was misused to settle personal scores. Both views shaped how courts interpreted the law over the next four decades.
When Parliament replaced the IPC with the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita in 2023, it didn’t discard this provision. Instead it carried it forward almost word for word, but split it into two separate sections, Section 85 which lays down the offence and punishment and Section 86, which defines what “cruelty” actually means. This is really the biggest structural change the BNS gives cruelty its own dedicated definition clause, something 498A managed only through an explanation attached to itself.
What Section 85 Actually Says
Section 85 says this if a woman’s husband, or any relative of her husband, subjects her to cruelty that person can be sent to prison for up to three years and made to pay a fine.
That’s it a short, direct sentence carrying enormous weight. Notice two things about how it’s framed. First, it isn’t limited to the husband alone it extends to his relatives too, which in real life usually means in-laws, a mother-in-law, father-in-law, sister-in-law, or anyone else living in that household who plays a part in the abuse. Second the punishment is a maximum of three years, meaning courts have the discretion to sentence anywhere up to that limit depending on the severity of the conduct proved.
Section 86: Giving “Cruelty” a Definition
Section 85 tells us cruelty is punishable. Section 86 tells us what actually counts as cruelty. And this is where the provision becomes genuinely useful, because “cruelty” as a word can mean a hundred different things to different people. The law narrows it down to two categories.
The first kind of cruelty covers willful conduct that is serious enough to push a woman toward suicide, or that causes grave injury or danger to her life, limb, or health physical or mental. This is a high threshold. It isn’t about an occasional argument or a bad day in the marriage. Courts have repeatedly clarified that ordinary friction or a routine domestic quarrel does not qualify as cruelty under this section. What the law is targeting is conduct so harmful, so relentless, that it genuinely endangers the woman’s life or wellbeing.
The second kind of cruelty is about harassment connected to unlawful demands most commonly dowry. If a woman, or her family is harassed to meet an illegal demand for property or valuable security or is harassed because they failed to meet such a demand that harassment itself becomes cruelty under this section. This is the clause that has historically caught the everyday reality of dowry harassment the constant pressure, the taunts about what wasn’t “given” the withholding of basic dignity until a demand is fulfilled.
Together, these two limbs try to capture both the dramatic, life-threatening end of cruelty and the slow-burning, everyday harassment that so often precedes it.
The Many Faces of Cruelty
When you read commentary and case law around this provision, cruelty rarely looks like just one thing. It can be:
- Physical cruelty — beating, slapping, or any act of bodily harm.
- Mental or emotional cruelty — humiliation, threats, constant insults, or being made to feel worthless in your own home.
- Economic cruelty — being denied access to money, or having your own earnings controlled by someone else.
- Social cruelty — being cut off from family and friends, isolated, and denied a support system.
- Dowry related harassment — being pressured, directly or indirectly, to bring more money, jewelry, or property from your parents’ home.
What’s worth remembering is that cruelty doesn’t need to be a single dramatic incident. It can also be a pattern the slow accumulation of small cruelties that together break a person down.
How the Law Treats This Offence
Section 85 is a cognizable offence, which means the police can register a First Information Report (FIR) and begin investigation without needing prior permission from a magistrate. It is also non-bailable, meaning bail isn’t granted automatically as a matter of right the accused has to approach a court and the decision lies within judicial discretion. The offence is non-compoundable too which means that even if the woman later wants to withdraw the complaint, she cannot simply do so the case continues through the formal process of the court, though the parties may pursue quashing through other legal remedies. Trial for this offence takes place before a Magistrate of the first class.
Under the accompanying procedural code, the Bharatiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita (BNSS), there’s a further nuance the offence is treated as cognizable specifically when information is given by the woman herself or by her relatives connected through blood, marriage, or adoption or, in their absence, by specified public servants notified by the State Government. This detail matters because it shapes who can actually set the criminal process in motion.
Reimagined — But How Different, Really?
Here’s an honest observation for anyone comparing Section 85 to old Section 498A, the substance hasn’t changed much. The definition of cruelty, the punishment, and the essential ingredients of the offence remain largely the same. What has changed is largely structural cruelty now has its own section and the framing has been tidied up for the new code.
The real evolution is happening not in the text of the law, but in how courts are applying it. In 2025, the Supreme Court in Shivangi Bansal v. Sahib Bansal, endorsed a set of safeguards first laid down by the Allahabad High Court for constituting Family Welfare Committees in cases under this section. These committees are meant to scrutinize complaints before hasty arrests are made, in an attempt to reduce misuse without weakening the provision’s protective core. Some High Courts have also directed a short cooling-off period before immediate arrest in matters where the punishment prescribed is comparatively lower, giving families a narrow window to resolve disputes before the criminal machinery takes over.
This tension between protecting genuine victims and guarding against misuse isn’t new, and it isn’t going away with the BNS either. Data from Delhi’s district courts on cases under this section reportedly shows very low conviction rates alongside a significant number of quashed or acquitted cases, a pattern that courts have cited repeatedly while calling for caution and better safeguards. At the same time, it is worth remembering why this law exists dowry harassment and domestic cruelty remain very real, and very underreported, problems in Indian households.
Why This Matters — Beyond the Textbook
It would be easy to read Sections 85 and 86 as just another set of definitions to memorize for an exam. But behind every FIR filed under this provision is a woman who at some point, decided that silence was worse than the fear of speaking up. The law cannot undo the years of harassment she may have faced, but it can offer her a route to safety to accountability and sometimes simply to being believed.
At the same time, as future lawyers, we have a responsibility to understand both sides of this conversation the protective intent of the law, and the genuine concerns around its misuse. A good lawyer whether prosecuting or defending, needs to hold both truths at once that cruelty against women is a real and urgent problem and that due process protects everyone including the accused.
In Conclusion
Sections 85 and 86 of the BNS are not a dramatic reinvention of Indian criminal law they are, in many ways, old wine carefully poured into a new bottle. But the story they carry forward is an important one a legal acknowledgment that a woman’s home should never become the place where she is least safe. As the law continues to evolve through judicial interpretation, Family Welfare Committees, cooling-off periods, and ongoing debate it remains at its heart, a provision built on a simple idea dignity within marriage is not a privilege, it is a right.
