Domestic violence act makes a dent: Special court allows second wife to retain house

Lucknow, July 5: Lucknow’s Shashi Sharma finally got the right to stay in her house and her husband was stopped from selling it off, thanks to the decision of a special court.The judgment from the special court, formed in April to hear cases under the Protection of Women from Domestic Violence (PWDV) Act, is hailed as significant by the city’s activists.
  
The decision in Shashi’s case came on June 30 from magistrate Ankita Shukla. Suraksha, a social organisation working on the issue, filed the case on behalf of Shashi.

Shashi (45), a resident of Aliganj, had married one Balkrishna Sharma of New Delhi 20 years ago. But at the time, she did not know that Sharma was already married and his wife stayed in Delhi.

After the wedding, Balkrishna went back to Delhi. Shashi remained in Lucknow. She started running a video parlour from her house, which helped support her two children. Sharma kept visiting now and then.

This May, Sharma told Shashi that he wanted to sell off the Lucknow house and take her to Delhi. But Shashi refused, saying that she did not want to fight with Sharma’s first wife and children and wanted to secure the future of her own children.

Angered by her decision, Sharma sold off the house in Shashi’s absence and locked it. Shashi approached Suraksha to help her.

Shalini Mathur of Suraksha said: “We approached the police and got the house unlocked and Shashi reinstated. But Sharma had already sold off the house and wanted Shashi to vacate it.”

In Shashi’s absence, he threw out her children and their belongings, sold off everything in the video parlour and took possession of the house.

Shashi approached Suraksha again, which lodged a case under the PWDV Act. Five hearings were held, but Sharma did not appear. Finally, the magistrate passed an order, in Sharma’s absence, that he has no right to sell off the house and Shashi and her children can live there.

Shashi, meanwhile, received a letter from the Bank of India, stating that a person had applied for home loan on her house and that Balkrishna Sharma had sold the house to him.

Suraksha, on the behalf of Shashi, informed the bank that since the property is disputed, it cannot be sold.

Hailing the decision, Mathur said they were earlier planning to take the case to family court, but since they wanted quick and better judgment, the PWDV court came in handy. “The family court deals only with marital problems, but the Act gives support to the women,” she said. Secondly, whether the wife is first or second, the Act covers all women and considers them equal. “Shashi was given quick relief and was reinstated in her house in just two months. We may take support from this Act for other cases too,” she said.

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