Chennai: Most litigants rejoice at a case being decided in their favour, but for the 53-year-old woman even a year-and-a-half after winning her case, she has nothing to be happy about. She filed a case against her son under the Maintenance and Welfare of Parents and Senior Citizens Act for ill treating and cheating her off her property; However, despite getting an order in her favour, her son has not paid her a single paisa in more than a year.
The woman had piling medical bills and barely any money to survive on, but she still did think of filing a case against her son. It was only when she applied for an encumbrance certificate and found out that her son had sold the house she owned and lived in to himself for Rs 23 lakh without her knowledge, she realised she had had enough.
In August 2014, she filed a case against her son and made an initial demand for Rs 9 lakh as she had to pay for her knee surgery and other health complications. The court then decided she would get a monthly maintenance of Rs 5,000. Aggrieved, her son approached the high court and lost the case again.
“The same verdict was passed again by the high court in October 2015, but I have not received a single rupee. Every month, there’s a new hearing and the judge tells him to pay me and he doesn’t. Last month, after I pleaded and begged the judge I was told that next month if my son doesn’t pay me, then he would be imprisoned. My son did not care for that at all and still didn’t pay. Now, when I asked the judge he suggested to me to “just take whatever he gives.”
The woman’s daughter claimed that her brother would give her almost the same amount of money before the case, but ever since the judgment her mother was not even getting that much money, “What is the point of having a document in hand demanding that he pay and it being of no use?” Even though she is still awaiting justice in this case, she wants to file a separate case against her son for taking illegal ownership of the house, she said.
