Fraud and Bigoted cooperative Housing Society

2 years ago

We live here in our house in a cooperative housing society here in Bombay for the last 45 years or so. Being Muslims we were never appreciated here, this being a building with majority of Catholics. Unlike, other such societies where the majority members of one faith openly do not permit and accept sale or membership to any person of another faith, we had directly purchased our house from the builder and these people had tried everything to force us to learn. Imagine to face the harassment for so long. We would have moved, but the problem is we also had a domestic issues where my parents seperated and my father tried to evict us, me my siblings and mother from our house, in which the society members wholly supported him. The flat is joint name, but the people of society edited it out, we had to fight at the registrar where the documentation was in my mother's name and we won and lost at the same time, because initially my mother was sole owner and now my fathers name has been inserted, till the time my mother gave up. This was 25 years ago. The sophistication of our society is that their game is at a different level. Till recently some played good cop and some played bad cop. The so called good ones only expressed emphathy and helplessness for this matter. Till the time some members passed away, supposedly good and bad ones.
Now, my society there are two buildings of A and B wing. Sometime years ago it was decided that they will be run independently but will be the same housing society. So maintenance, sinking fund and billing were seperated. However, there will be same chairman but a secretary and treasurer along with joint associate secretary and treasurer for eac wing. So one wing had the house in order with their own AGM and other functions. On the other hand we had our last AGM 11 years ago. With no audit, accounts or any transparency. Plus for significant period we had a non member as joint associate secretary.
Over the years our house has been leaking, the roof has been falling apart. On approaching members of our society, they always express emphatyand helplessness pointing their fingers at the one bad member residing on top of our flat and the eternal treasure of the society. He blamed the leakage from the terrace of the third floor for the leakage on our ground floor flat. His wife has always been abusive and harsh towards us. Apparently, she was a teacher in a reputed convent school. So now we only have 4 living members of the possible and total 9 members of our wing in the housing society, plus a tresspasser. But still after all these years of non functioning, because some members had departed and the non member secretary resigning, these people (non members) decided among themselves to appoint new committee members in with collaboration of the secretary and chairman of other wing who untill now refused to entertain us. Now the have transferred the shares of those deceased and appointment them as committee members. Everything is now backdated on paper. However, there have no answer to when the notices was issued, who and when the agenda was set for a special AGM, how the Corum was decided. All this while where the transfer of shares for other members had been dangling, since no AGM was ever held in 11 years. Also, I have just learnt that all AGM and elections were suspended by the registrar of cooperative housing Society for the last 2 years until September 2021 due to covid-19 pandemic. Plus, nothing that has happened in our society is in accordance, in law and in spirit of Acts, rules and laws of Maharashtra housing societies.
My issue here is since I had been on a job out of town, tired of the insults, abuse and harrasment, along with the non existent transparency, no audit and no accounts, no maintenance and repairs my mother stopped paying maintenance all together. Last year the outgoing secretary did try to make amends by accepting our dues with a small fine. But the treasurer like before was not willing to issue bills and receipt the way he had stopped for eleven years. All we wanted were things to be transparent, right and in order. Based on this and our experience with other lawyer and advocate, who after one or two meetings suddenly become busy and forgetful or would want to increase their fees at will, we are also having serious trust issues.