Sr citizen takes on ‘bullying’ builder

[sidmis]

Sr citizen takes on ‘bullying’ builder
as reported by SUKHADA TATKE,TNN 6 Oct 2008

MUMBAI: Refusing to be coerced into a signing a redevelopment agreement, a senior citizen from Andheri dragged a “bullying” developer to court.

Seventy-year-old Baby Shetty has been living as a tenant on the ground floor of Gulam Mohammed building in Andheri (W) since 1960. “My troubles began when Gulam Immamuddin, the original landlord of the building, died in 2000,’’ said Shetty.

“In 2001, one Nabi Sheikh approached the tenants saying he was the sole proprietor of AS Builders and that he was the landlord. However, in 2005, we were flummoxed when one Vijay Mallya of Ameya Developers introduced himself as the landlord,’’ she said.

But that wasn’t all. Soon, the tenants realised that Mallya had signed a redevelopment agreement with the society neighbouring their building. “We were shocked to learn that the two plots had been amalgamated without our knowledge and the redevelopment agreement stood for both the plots,’’ said Shetty.

She then decided to take the legal route. In December last year, her lawyer Bhavesh Parmar filed a suit against Mallya in the city civil court challenging the redevelopment agreement. The court stayed the matter.

Mallya, too, filed a suit in the small causes court against Shetty, alleging that she was refusing to vacate the property. “Claiming to be the owner of the property, Mallya said the structure was dilapidated. He accused Shetty of causing nuisance by not vacating it,’’ said Parmar. “We challenged Mallya’s ownership claim and asked him to furnish proof. Mallaya did not do so as his name did not figure in the property card,’’ he said.

Shetty alleged that she was being harassed by the builder. “One day, somebody removed the first-floor roof. By then, the remaining three tenants had been forced to leave and I had to suffer alone. The ceiling of my ground-floor apartment was damaged because of all the leakage. It was a living hell,’’ she recalled.

Then, Mallya submitted an affidavit in the small causes court, with changes in the property card. “We used the RTI Act to get hold of the documents he had submitted. We found that the papers had been forged,’’ said Parmar.

“Mallya had submitted seven deeds of conveyance (right from the original landlord to his heirs to the first builder who had approached the tenants claiming to be the landlord) registered in 1994, but the documents annexed were of much later dates, even as late as 1997 and 2005,’’ he said.

Mallya’s lawyer Archana Khan, however, told TOI that Shetty was not a tenant, but her husband was one. “She did not get the tenancy transferred. How can she claim rights to the house?’’ But Parmar said tenancy rights were automatically transferred to the closest kin, who had been living in the house for a long period.

The city civil court last week accepted that Mallya was not the landlord.

Sr citizen takes on ?bullying? builder-Mumbai-Cities-The Times of India