Sisters demand annual maintenance of Rs 4 crore from father

Two sisters have moved a Delhi court seeking a maintenance of over Rs four crore per year from their father to pursue studies and meet daily expenses, saying they had left home in 2010 due to harassment meted out by their parents.

The duo, native of Ludhiana in Punjab, filed their plea before Metropolitan Magistrate Monika Saroha, alleging that they were subjected to torture, harassment, beating and all kinds of abuse, when they were residing with their parents.

The younger sister, preparing for her civil service exam, told the judge that "they are students and they have no source of income to maintain them".

"The petitioners (the two sister) are unable to maintain themselves as they have no source of income and they do not possess any movable and immovable properties in their name and respondent no.1 (father) is duty bound to maintain his daughters who are students.

"The respondent intentionally, wilfully and deliberately neglected to maintain the sisters and he has caused economic domestic violence against the complainants," their Advocate Shaan Mohan said.

The court has issued notice to the father seeking his response by January next year.
In their plea, the girls told the court that the trouble began when the elder sister, a final year B.Com student, told her father, a shopkeeper, that she wanted to pursue MBA.

The younger one, a first-year B.Com student, too wanted to study for an MBA. But their father threatened to withdraw both of them from college, the petition said.

The counsel also said the parents should be prohibited from committing any act of domestic violence.

"The girl's father should be stopped from repeating any acts of physical and mental abuse, sexual abuse, threatening, lodging false cases or sending friends to threaten them and their friends," Mohan said.

The counsel said, "Faced with the prospect of being put under house arrest, the girls ran away to Delhi with a family friend in February 2010 and joined a Delhi college to complete their studies"

"There is great urgency because of threats being extended to petitioners to eliminate them in the name of honour killing enough to endanger life and liberty of the petitioners because the respondents are capable of executing their threats to reality," Mohan said.

"In these facts and circumstances, this court may direct the respondents to pay the aggrieved (the two sisters) a sum of Rs 2,00,00,000 each," the counsel said.

The lawyer said that an order should be passed in favour of the sisters to have access to their personal effects by directing the respondents to hand over personal effects of the petitioners (clothes, jewelry, books etc.)

"An order directing the father to buy a house for them to stay and till then secure an accommodation and pay rent for the same," the counsel said.

Earlier, the Delhi High Court had provided them with police protection after they alleged that the family friends have "attacked" them.

The counsel also requested the court to issue direction to the SHO of the police station concerned to give protection to the girls.