By Rana Ajit, IANS
New Delhi : Rani Devi is 75 and a widow. Despite being a mother of two well-off sons, she is reconciled to spending her last days with one of her cousins here, away from the warmth and security of her own family.
The native of neighbouring Haryana was forced to stay with her cousin Dhani Ram Gupta after her Mumbai-based younger son, an alumnus of the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Powai, turned her away saying: "Ma, I am too poor to afford your upkeep."
Her older son, an executive with a multinational company in Madhya Pradesh town, told her: "Ma you can stay with me, but on one condition. When I step out for work in the morning, you will have to come out and stay in the lawn outside the house because my wife does not like your face."
Rani Devi's traumatic experience was narrated to IANS by senior advocate Neveen Matta, who helped Rani Devi win a court battle against her two sons for a paltry maintenance amount of Rs.2,000 a month from each of her sons.
The government introduced the Maintenance and Welfare of Parents and Senior Citizens Bill, 2007, in Lok Sabha March 20 to strengthen the case of aged people like Rani Devi, who incidentally is still doing the rounds of courts.
"The younger son was so callous that he challenged the magisterial court's order before a superior sessions judge, securing a stay on the lower court order," said Matta, adding the hapless widow was continuing to fight the case in a Rohini district court with help from the Delhi Legal Aide Cell.
Rani Devi's tale is not the only one of its kind. Though there are no official statistics available on the number of parents approaching courts to claim compensation from their children in Delhi or elsewhere in the country, lawyers fighting such court battles say more and more elderly citizens – there are nearly 75 million senior citizens above the age of 60 in India – devoid of social security, partly owing to erosion of the traditional joint family system, are approaching the courts for relief.
The lawyers say instances of elderly parents suing their wards for maintenance and on sundry other grounds still constitute an "insignificant percentage" of the over 25 million cases of various natures pending in lower courts all over India.
In a similar case, a septuagenarian Sikh man, Devendra Wadhwa, has approached a civil court to evict his two sons from the house he purchased with his own income on the ground that they were harassing him instead of ensuring his upkeep, said another lawyer Ram Avtar.
What are the laws under which such senior citizens abandoned by their sons and daughters can approach courts to seek relief and maintenance from their wards?
"At present, the only provision in the law is Section 125 of the Criminal Procedure Code (CRPC), under which a senior citizens can drag his son to court to seek maintenance from him," said former Additional Sessions Judge Prem Kumar, adding it was the same provision under which abandoned wives could claim maintenance from their estranged husbands.
For relief under this provision, an elderly citizen can approach any court of judicial magistrate, Kumar said.
Section 125 of the CrPC is the order for maintenance of wives, children and parents. Part 1 (d) Section 125 of the CrPC states: "If any person having sufficient means neglects or refuses to maintain his father or mother who is unable to maintain himself or herself then a first class magistrate can order him to give a monthly maintenance allowance, not exceeding Rs.500.
"But under this provision, a daughter is not liable to pay maintenance to her parents as Section 125 specifically mentions the word 'his', meaning only the son," said Kumar.
But things are set to change after the passage of the Maintenance and Welfare of Parents and Senior Citizens Bill, 2007. The bill is likely to be passed by the yearend.
Under it, a person responsible for the upkeep of his or her parent, in case of failure, can attract punitive measures like three months imprisonment and a fine of Rs.5,000. Besides, it also provides for an option to parents to revoke their will.
The bill provides for establishments of special tribunals at the district level having wide-ranging powers to order sons and daughters to provide need-based maintenance to their parents.
"The law would provide effective care and protection to senior citizens and would provide a speedy and inexpensive legal framework to grant maintenance to them," Minister for Social Justice and Empowerment Meira Kumar had told Lok Sabha while introducing the bill.
(Rana Ajit can be contacted at [email protected])