NRI’s land auctioned to pay maintenance

Deepender Deswal

Tribune News Service

Hisar, July 20

The Bhiwani district administration has auctioned a piece of land owned by an NRI businessman, hailing from Roopgarh village in Bhiwani district and settled in London, to pay a maintenance cost of Rs 10.20 lakh to his wife whom he had abandoned soon after marriage in 2011.

Neeraj Rani, a resident of Dinod village in Bhiwani, who now resides in Mumbai, said that she got married to Pankaj on November 22, 2011. He went to London about a month after the marriage and later married a foreigner there. When he did not return to India, she filed a case of domestic violence against him in a Mumbai court.

The judicial magistrate at the Panvel court in Mumbai, which is hearing the case of domestic violence, ordered Pankaj to pay a maintenance cost of Rs 20,000 to his wife about five years ago. But he did not obey the court orders.

Neeraj Rani again approached the court to seek compensation from her husband. The court ordered the Bhiwani district administration to auction Pankaj’s land in his ancestral village to arrange the maintenance cost to be paid to his wife.

A team of administration officials comprising naib tehsildar Ajay Kumar processed the auction of the land measuring nine kanal and one marla in Roopgarh village for Rs 1021,500 on Friday. A resident of Dinod village purchased the land.