A single judge of Allahabad High Court held as follows,

From Paras 13-14,

13. From the above analysis, it is clear for holding a person liable u/s 3 of Domestic Violence Act, the following condition must be satisfied:
“The respondent must be related to the aggrieved person in the manner as mentioned in Section 2(f) and he lived or has been living together with aggrieved person in a shared household and then commits domestic violence in the manner mentioned in Section 3 of Domestic Violence Act.”
14. This Court came across number of cases where just to harass the family of husband or the person in domestic relationship, aggrieved party used to implicate the relatives of other side who are not even living or lived with the aggrieved person in shared household and they have been residing at separate places. Therefore, courts below while issuing notice u/s 12 of the Domestic Violence Act must look into this fact from the perusal of the application filed u/s 12 of the Domestic Violence Act along with other available record including the report of the Protection Officer, if available on record. It is further observed that the concerned courts before issuing notices to the persons impleaded as respondents in the application under Domestic Violence Act should satisfy about the fulfilment of the conditions mentioned in paragraph no. 13 of this judgment.

From Para 20,

20. The court below is free to proceed against applicant nos. 1 and 7 and decide Case No. 59 of 2016 (Smrita Srivastava Vs. Rajiv Kumar Srivastava and others) expeditiously within a period of 60 days from the date of receiving the copy of this order.

Index of DV cases is here.