Mumbai: Parents do not approach the police against their children unless they have been pushed to the brink, the Bombay High Court observed last week while dismissing a petition filed by a 53-year-old man against his eviction from his father’s home.
It is only after all the options are exhausted that, by way of last resort, the matter is reported to the police. A single-judge bench of Justice N J Jamadar observed, “Generally parents do not take recourse to the law enforcement agencies against their children. Seeking the reversal of the eviction, the son’s lawyer argued that in 13 years the police had registered only two non-cognisable (NC) reports against the son based on his father’s complaints. The elderly man had lodged an NC at the Vakola police station twice – first in July 2022 after his son allegedly threatened and assaulted him for not selling his property, and in February 2023 when his son allegedly came home drunk and assaulted his father. The son had moved the high court in 2025 after the tribunal under Maintenance and welfare of parents and senior citizens Act, 2007 ordered his eviction from his father’s house in Santacruz (East) in September 2024 and the appellate tribunal upheld the order in December 2024.
The judge said that in this particular case, things had evidently come to such a pass that “the senior citizen was required to approach the law enforcement agencies on more than one occasion to protect his life and limb. The court also said that CCTV footage of the son physically assaulting his 83-year-old father was “distressing” and his conduct “reprehensible”. The octogenarian had alleged that his son, the eldest of his three children, had an “abusive and aggressive temperament”. The court was told that the son was employed “at a very senior position in a reputed company and earns sumptuous remuneration and owns multiple immovable properties” but continued to live with his parents and coerced his father into selling his house.
