NRI mother killed & father dead,boy’s kin fight for his inheritance rights

And now his maternal family,which resides in this village,have filed a suit in Khanna court seeking inheritance rights for the boy. Says Manmohan’s nani Kulwant Kaur Benipal,“It is not about money alone. We need the boy’s birth certificate so that we can get him admitted to some school here in India. We do not have his birth certificate. Then his father’s family owns some land here in Punjab and also a house. Manmohan has a right to this property but no one from his father’s family is ready to talk about this; so we had to file this suit.”

The family won Manmohan’s custody in an Indian Court this March,after it had been granted to them by a Canadian court in 2009. Manmohan has been living with his maternal family since he was 10 months old.

“Manmohan was born in March 2007 and was sent to his daadi here in Punjab 10 months later. After keeping Manmohan with her for a week,she sent him to us saying that she could not handle the child. Since then,Manmohan has been living with us. He addresses me as Mummy and my husband as Papa,” says Benipal.

After Amandeep’s murder,according to the Benipal family,Gurvinder called just once or twice and after that no one from Gurvinder’s family,which consists of his mother,sister and her husband,has ever asked for Manmohan.

Recalls Kulwant,“We had paid Amandeep’s in-laws Rs 23 lakh in cash so that they could take us all to Canada. I have three daughters and a son. Amandeep was the eldest and she was 19 when we married her off. Her in-laws,who had been living in Canada since 2009,promised us that they would take us all to Canada.”

But Amandeep was stabbed to death by her father-in-law. She was 23 years old at the time and her body was found eight hours after the murder in a washroom in the basement of the grocery store.

“We have been told that Amandeep was killed by her father-in-law for insurance money. They had set up a grocery store,bought a home and a car just six months prior to this murder. Everything was co-owned by Amandeep and her husband who was the lone son of his family. We were later told that while Kammikar Singh claimed all along that he had killed Aman because she was of loose character,the police found out that she had been killed for something like 2,00,000 Canadian dollars,which stood in her name as insurance,” informed Kulwant Kaur Benipal.

Amandeep’s aunt Beant Kaur curses her fate. “Amandeep’s father is a small farmer with growing children. We all felt that if the family could migrate to Canada,it would be good for their future. Amandeep’s marriage was an arranged one and to begin with we never faced any issues. Apart from small tiffs which are regular in a family,neither Amandeep nor her in-laws ever complained to us,” she said.

The Benipal family is now looking for help “so that we can get this child his due. His grandmother has shifted to Canada and we have no contact with her. We need to find out a way to ensure that the family property is transferred in the name of this child. People who have been tending to his property here in Punjab have put it on sale,” informed Kulwant Kaur Benipal.