63-year-old Shobha Shah owns a house worth Rs 4 crore. But she has been forced out of it by her daughter and now makes a living in its front porch
63-year-old Shobha Shah owns a house worth Rs 4 crore. But she has been forced out of it by her daughter and now makes a living in its front porch
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Is she mine? 63-year-old Shobha Shah ponders about her future and her 'wayward' elder daughter pic/Subhash Barolia |
The corner street in the posh Mukherjee Nagar colony looks just like the one where Munnabhai camped with the gang of oldies who were thrown out of their tinsel town old-age home. Only, this time, the fighter is a grand mom and not a goon.
Sixty-three-year-old Shobha Shah didn't have to wait for property sharks to come banging on her door. She found them right at home.
Devil's ward?
It all started when Manisha Tyagi, Shah's elder daughter, decided to grab mummy's pie as the latter moved out to her second home in Surat last year. Manisha, who was staying with Shah since 2002, delayed joining her mother in Surat on the pretext of her son's board exams. But she turned the place into a paying guest accommodation instead, and allegedly threatened to kill Shah if she returned.
Her son has gone abroad for higher studies but Manisha reportedly does not intend to vacate the house.
"Her character has always been shady. All the tenants in the house are young bachelors, and she's very friendly with them. Neighbours suspect dirty business and think the tenants own the place," said Shah's younger daughter Swati Banerjee, who helps her mother with daily supplies of food, water and clothing on the latter's porch-life. Swati stays in Model Town in Delhi and has offered to take Shah with her but the old lady wants to fight for her right from the porch of her 'beloved house'.
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Shobha Shah sitting in her front porch |
Tears and more
Amid strewn polythene packs, a small cooler, crumpled bed sheets and a foldable cot, Shah sheds a tear, and then another, and more, and then walks over to her neighbour's. "See, she's going to the neighbour's place to relieve herself. She suffers from urinary incontinency, but who cares?" said Swati.
The current inmates of the house, which Shah's husband had transferred in her name before passing away in 1993, include two male law practitioners, one civil services aspirant and Manisha.
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The disputed Mukherjee Nagar house |
Threats of death
Manisha came to live with Shah after an unsuccessful marriage. Family members say she wasn't in touch with her ex-husband thereafter, but he is back on the scene and may have had a significant part to play in the scheme. "He's a conman who sells one piece of land to 10 poor people," said Shah's son Swagat, as he offered a sympathetic neighbour water in a noodle-cup glass. Swagat has come from Jabalpur to help his mother fight the case.
Allegedly, Manisha and her teenaged son Prateek went to Shah's brother in Mumbai about a month back to inform him of their decision, and 'threatened to kill' whoever tried to interfere. Subsequently, Shah, who was in Surat, came to know and stepped in with the rest of her family, only to be dragged to the police station.
'Cops don't care'
"On August 10, we came over to see what was happening. The tenants spoke to Manisha on phone since she wasn't home, and called the police, complaining that some 'intruders' were bothering them. We went to the police station, gave our side of the story and have been fighting since then. We have the property papers to prove we're right, but there's been no action so far. It's been a month, and it's still status quo," said Swati.
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Shobha's daughter Swati Banerjee |
Manisha, meanwhile, continues with her stay unperturbed, and denies all accusations, even as the rest of the family says she has stolen some original property documents and fooled her old mother into signing documents relating to an electric power connection. "I'm still in a state of shock," is all Shah can say, before breaking into tears again. The reconstruction rights for the second floor and the roof allegedly lie with a builder who was employed to restore the space post MCD demolitions in 2007, and this was the reason Shah had left the original documents behind for MCD clearance.
One of the rooms in the house is vacant, but the old lady has no access to it. So, she spends her days in the veranda, waiting for justice, even as one of the tenants has offered to vacate against a sum of Rs 20,000. The others, claim the family, booze and abuse Shah, and so does Manisha's ex-husband, who comes to stay over often.
Swati says the police have been uncooperative, even when Manisha's husband, drunk, manhandled her. "When he threatened to kill us, I called the cops but they let him off. Later, Manisha threatened to harm me and my daughteru00a0 inside the Station House Officer's room," said Swati.
Despite repeated complaints and numerous calls to the PCR, the police took around 15 days to register a case after the victim approached the Joint Commissioner of Police (North) Karnal Singh. A case was finally registered on August 27, but the accused were booked under the Section 448 (Punishment for House Trespass). "While registering the case, the cops ignored their threats to kills us," said Swati.
The case is to come up for hearing soon.
(With inputs from Soumya Mukerji)
What the cops say
Deputy Commissioner of Police (North West) NS Bundela agrees there was a slight delay in this case. "After receiving the complaints, we were investigating the matter and had given both sides an equal opportunity to present their evidences. It is a matter related to property. After checking their papers, we registered a case and are investigating it on merit," said Bundela.
