Background: Domestic violence against married women is prevalent in our society. Reported cases of domestic violence against women and homicide of women by their intimate partners represents only the tip of the iceberg and most of the cases are submerged, allegedly invisible to society.

Aim: To study the proportion and contributory factors for domestic violence against married women.

Methodology: Cross­sectional descriptive study was done for a period of two months (1st Feb to 31st Mar 2016). Houses where married women were residing was listed and selected using simple random technique and only one married women was interviewed using well designed pretested questionnaires after considering inclusion and exclusion criteria and obtaining written informed consent. Percentage and chi square tests were used to analyse the data.

Results: Results showed 186 (33.8%) of married women experienced domestic violence in last one year in our study area, of them majority faced verbal abuse (96.7%) followed by emotional abuse (78.4%). Women who experienced domestic violence, most of them studied till high school (34.4%), more than half of them were living in nuclear family (60%) and unemployed (56.4%). Majority told domestic violence was by their husbands (73.11%) and more among the women whose husbands are unemployed (57.6%) (P< 0.05) and 46% of women experiences domestic violence at least once in a week. Husbands habit of substance abuse (48.9%) was observed as common reason for domestic violence and commonly seen among women whose husbands are addicted to alcohol and this association was significant statistically (P < 0.05).

Keywords: Domestic Violence; Married Women; Urban Slums.