Neha Tara Mehta, Hindustan Times
New Delhi, July 29, 2007
The houses of elders in Delhi hide an ugly secret: one in every two elderly persons in the capital is facing harassment over property, or knows another senior who is. And it’s upscale south Delhi which has the dubious distinction of harbouring the bulk of the harassment cases (41.6 per cent), followed by central Delhi (20.8 per cent).
These are among the shocking home truths revealed by the Older Persons Property Victimisation Survey done by HelpAge India for HT. The survey, that took off on June 15, the Elder Abuse Prevention Day, was conducted on a sample size of 1,183 persons aged between 65 and 91 in 46 colonies.
Only 402 seniors agreed to come on record. Lajpat Nagar, Saket and Rajinder Nagar were found to have the highest incidence of harassment of elders. North Delhi emerged the most elderly sensitive zone, with only 5.5 per cent cases being reported from there.
“The incidence of property-related harassment could be even higher among Delhi’s 11 lakh elderly people, as at least 31 per cent of those interviewed admitted facing problems but refused to talk about them,” says Nidhi Raj Kapoor, head of communications, HelpAge India.
The questionnaires were distributed by elderly persons from senior citizen welfare bodies.
Commenting on the findings, M.M. Sabharwal, president emeritus of HelpAge India, who is 85 himself, said: “We have lost our culture and ethos of love and care for the elders.” Supreme Court advocate Geeta Luthra agrees: “I see several property cases in South Delhi in which children are so callous that their parents die even before their death.”
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How true - "....parents who are abused by their own children, die even before their death".
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