Chandigarh: Court directs son to pay maintenance to ailing mother

The court of judicial magistrate (First Class) Navjot Kaur has ordered one of the sons of an 84-year-old bedridden woman to pay maintenance charges to the tune of ₹11.4 lakh which have not been paid for the last six years. The woman, who has been fighting it out in court over maintenance against her estranged son since 2019 through her other son, Vineet Gulati, her Special Power of Attorney (SPA) holder, had filed an execution application in court.

The complainant, Santosh Gulati, a resident of Sector 35, filed a case under various sections of the Domestic Violence Act against her husband Lalit Gulati and one son Sandeep Gulati whom she accused of torturing and harassing her.

Santosh had filed a case under Section 12 of the Protection of Women from Domestic Violence Act, 2005, stating that she is married to Lalit, a retired airman of the Indian Air Force (IAF), and has three children. She stated that her husband was an alcoholic and her son, Sandeep, had tried to evict her from the house to deny her share in property as she used to stay on the ground floor.

In their response, Lalit and Sandeep had stated that the petition was filed at the instance of Vineet, who has an evil eye on her property.

The court ruled, “As per statement of the SPA holder Vineet Gulati, the petitioner’s husband Lalit Gulati and son Sandeep Gulati are directed to pay the outstanding amount considering the old age and medical history of the complainant, failing which coercive steps against Sandeep Gulati will be adopted.”

Even after the court had pronounced the order in the complainant’s favour in 2023, the maintenance was still not paid by Sandeep, following which an execution application was filed. Both the parties went into appeals, which were decided in January 2025.

The court, while deciding two appeals in the same dispute in January this year, ordered that the trial court had righty granted the maintenance to the tune of ₹30,000 per month to the petitioner. The court, however, modified the order passed in 2023 and directed that the father and son pay the amount in 2:1 ratio, with Sandeep directed to pay ₹20,000 every month and Lalit directed to pay ₹10,000 every month. This maintenance was to be provided from the date of filing application, which was in 2019.

Court had called it ‘an unfortunate dispute between family members’

While deciding the appeals filed by both the aggrieved parties, the trial court, in 2023, had remarked that the present case is an outcome of an unfortunate dispute between the family members.