Kamal Ghorui
NEW DELHI: A court in Delhi has ordered the former wife of cricketer Shikhar Dhawan to return approximately Rs 5.7 crore, holding that orders passed by an Australian family court under the concept of “property settlement” are contrary to Indian law and unenforceable in India.Family court judge Devender Kumar Garg also directed that she couldn’t demand Rs 16.9 crore as awarded by the Australian court. The judge observed that the concept of “property settlement” under Family Law Act 1975 was alien to Indian matrimonial law, including Hindu Marriage Act 1955.
The court said that under the Australian law, all properties of the husband were brought into a “marital pool” and the court might award up to 60% of total properties in India and abroad to the wife. In Dhawan’s case, the Australian court invoked Section 79 of the 1975 Act to direct payment of AU $8,12,397.50 from the sale of property. The judge noted that the former wife didn’t appear before the court. He recorded that the Australian court had directed Dhawan to pay sale proceeds of two properties in Australia under “interim property settlement”, which the cricketer claimed he hadn’t consented to. The court also held that Dhawan proved AU $82,000 was forcibly retained.
