An Indian couple have sued their son to court and are demanding that he and his wife either produce a grandchild within a year or cough up almost $650,000.
Sanjeev and Sadhana Prasad, who are the parents suing their son, noted that they exhausted their savings raising and educating their pilot son and paying for a lavish wedding. However, their son and his wife have refused to give them a grandchild, so now, they want a payback. The highly unusual lawsuit was filed on grounds of “mental harassment”.
“My son has been married for six years, but they are still not planning a baby,” the couple said in their petition filed with a court in Haridwar. “At least if we have a grandchild to spend time with, our pain will become bearable”.
The compensation they are demanding, 50milion rupees ($646,000), includes the cost of a wedding reception in a five-star hotel, a luxury car worth $80,000, and paying for the couple’s honeymoon abroad, per reports.
Mr. Prasad disclosed that he had spent all his savings on his son, Shrey Sagar, sending him to the US in 2006 for pilot training at a cost of $65,000. However, Shrey Sagar returned to India in 2007 and lost his job so, his family had to support him financially for more than two years, according to his father.
Shrey Sagar, who is now 35 years, eventually landed a job as a pilot. His parents later arranged his marriage to Shubhangi Sinha, now 31 years, in 2016, in the hope that they would have a “grandchild to play with” during their retirement.
“We also had to take a loan to build our house and now we are going through a lot of financial hardships,” the couple said in their petition. “Mentally too we are quite disturbed because we are living alone”.
The couple’s lawyer, Arvind Kumar, said the petition would be taken up for hearing by the court in Northern India on 17th May, 2022. Lawyer AK Kumar told local media that the couple had demanded the money “because of mental cruelty”.
“It is a dream of every parent to become a grandparent. They had been waiting for years to become grandparents,” Lawyer Kumar said.
India’s Strong Family System
India has a strong joint family system with many generations, including grandparents, nephews, aunts, and uncles, often living in the same household. This family structure is very well-suited to India’s current working conditions, and often, businesses run by a family will prefer to hire family members over anybody else out of preference.
However, in recent years the trend has shifted, with young couples preferring to move away from their parents or siblings, such as in this case, opting to work rather than focus on having children and staying at home.
The younger generations are increasingly turning away from the joint family form, and while family is still as important, the geographical proximity and hierarchal authority is not as important to some families as it once was. However frequent visits are still encouraged, and because of this families are still seen to be as close as under the traditional joint family structure.
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