If your husband is deliberately not attending hearings in your domestic violence case, filed under the Protection of Women from Domestic Violence Act, 2005 (PWDVA), you have effective legal mechanisms to ensure this evasion doesn't indefinitely delay or defeat your access to the relief you're seeking, since Indian procedural law specifically anticipates and addresses exactly this kind of non-cooperation.

The first thing to understand is that non-attendance by the respondent doesn't stall your case indefinitely — the Magistrate hearing your PWDVA application has the authority to proceed with the matter even in his absence, provided proper notice has been given. Section 13 of the PWDVA governs service of notice, and once the court is satisfied that notice was properly served (through the modes discussed extensively throughout our conversation — personal service, or where this proves difficult, substituted service through affixing at his residence or, increasingly, electronic service via email or WhatsApp with proper confirmation, as discussed in earlier responses), the Magistrate can proceed to hear your application and pass orders based on your evidence and testimony, even without his participation, since deliberate non-appearance after proper service is generally treated as his own choice to forgo the opportunity to present his side, rather than something that prevents you from obtaining relief.

If he's specifically evading service itself — meaning notices aren't reaching him because he's avoiding the process server, providing false addresses, or otherwise making himself deliberately hard to locate — your lawyer can request the court to direct substituted service, including publication in a newspaper or affixing notice at his last known address, following the same principles discussed in the earlier response regarding service defects and remedies. Once the court is satisfied this substituted service was properly executed according to law, it can proceed to treat him as validly served regardless of whether he personally saw the notice, since the law doesn't allow a respondent to indefinitely defeat proceedings simply through evasion of formal service.

If he has been properly served but simply doesn't show up to hearings despite knowing about them, and the Magistrate has specifically directed his appearance which he continues to ignore, courts hearing PWDVA matters do have coercive tools available — while the Act itself is primarily civil/protective in character rather than criminal, Section 31 of the PWDVA specifically makes breach of a protection order (once passed) a criminal offence carrying imprisonment up to one year, a fine, or both, meaning if the court has already passed a protection order against him (even if passed ex-parte due to his non-appearance) and he violates it, this becomes independently actionable as a criminal matter, giving you additional leverage and a formal enforcement mechanism beyond the underlying PWDVA proceeding itself.

For the underlying application itself, if he continues avoiding participation despite proper notice, the Magistrate can pass an ex-parte order granting the relief you've sought — protection orders, residence orders, monetary relief, or whatever specific remedies your application requested — based on your presented evidence, since the entire point of the PWDVA's expedited, protective design (requiring the first hearing within three days and the inquiry to conclude within sixty days, as discussed extensively throughout our conversation) is precisely to ensure that a respondent's non-cooperation doesn't leave a genuinely vulnerable applicant without protection while waiting indefinitely for the other side to engage.

If there's a specific court date he's been directed to appear on and simply doesn't show, and the Magistrate wants to ensure his participation before finalizing a particular order, the court retains the power under the Act's general procedural framework (Section 28 allows the Magistrate to lay down its own procedure for disposal of applications) to issue coercive process, including, in appropriate circumstances, a warrant for his appearance, similar to the general principles discussed extensively throughout our conversation regarding non-appearance escalating from summons to bailable and eventually non-bailable warrants in other proceedings.

It's also worth understanding that even while your PWDVA case is pending and he's not participating, you can separately and simultaneously pursue interim relief specifically — since Magistrates hearing PWDVA applications commonly grant interim protection orders even at the very first hearing, before the matter is fully and finally decided, precisely to ensure you're not left unprotected during whatever time the full proceeding takes, and his non-appearance shouldn't prevent your lawyer from specifically requesting and obtaining this interim protection promptly.

If his non-attendance appears connected to a broader pattern of avoiding all legal accountability — for instance, if he's also evading a parallel maintenance claim, a 498A criminal complaint, or divorce proceedings — it's worth having your lawyer coordinate strategy across all these related proceedings together, since a pattern of evasion across multiple matters can itself become relevant context supporting stronger interim relief and demonstrating to each court handling these related matters that his non-cooperation reflects a consistent unwillingness to engage with legal process rather than a one-off scheduling difficulty.

Conclusion: A husband's non-attendance in a PWDVA case doesn't prevent you from obtaining relief — once proper service (including substituted service if he's evading it) is established, the Magistrate can proceed to hear your application and pass ex-parte protection, residence, and monetary orders based on your evidence alone, with any subsequent violation of these orders becoming independently criminally actionable under Section 31 of the Act, and courts retain coercive process including warrants if his specific appearance becomes necessary for finalizing particular relief — so ensure your lawyer actively pursues both proper service documentation and, where appropriate, interim protection promptly, rather than allowing his evasion to delay the protection you need. You can reach out to the team at Aapka Legal Advice for guidance on ensuring your case proceeds effectively despite his non-cooperation, and this list of Top Criminal Lawyers in India | Aapka Legal Advice can help you find suitable representation to pursue this promptly.