For the past one week, Hema, the 42-year-old wife of former VMC employee Paresh Trivedi, has not stepped out of her home. She is scared of having to face questions from relatives and friends who would want to know if her husband had actually mortgaged her and her 21-year-old son for a Rs 50,000 loan.‘‘I was shocked to learn through newspapers a week ago that the moneylender had prepared a document attested by an executive magistrate stating that my husband had mortgaged me and my son to him,’’ says a sobbing Hema, a graduate from MS University who works as a peon in a primary school run by the VMC and earns a monthly salary of Rs 3,700. Her husband has been jobless since he took voluntary retirement about a year ago. The family lives in a two-room rented flat.Not willing to think ill of her husband, she says: ‘‘My husband and I have been cheated by the money-lender who pretended to be our friend till six months ago’’.Trying to hold back her tears, Hema says she’s not gone to work ever since the news of the mortgage appeared in local newspapers last Monday. Besides embarrassing questions, she says she’s scared of Abdul Qadir Ghulam Rasool Mansuri, the moneylender, whose house is a stone’s throw from her school in Ladwada. She claims Mansuri had assaulted her husband and her son in connection with the loan and booked a false police complaint against Trivedi. She is trying to get herself transferred to a school near her house.Hema says her husband had known Mansuri for the past several years but ‘‘we never thought he would turn out to be so wicked.’’ She admits that her husband had taken a loan from Mansuri and given two undated bank cheques of Rs 2 lakh as well as a promissory note of Rs 2 lakh as part of a guarantee against the loan. She also admits her husband had signed on a blank Rs 20 stamp paper but says: ‘‘My husband did not enter into the mortgage deed recovered from the moneylender’s possession by the police.’’Police had raided and searched the premises of the moneylender after a complaint of extortion lodged by Trivedi. The family landed in a financial crisis after they took a loan from private moneylenders for the purchase of a tenement in Manjalpur area 10 years ago. She says since the rate of interest was high, her husband could not repay the debt and they had to sell the house.Trivedi, who was working as personal assistant to the VMC’s city engineer, then sought voluntary retirement to repay the rest of the debt. Trivedi took the loan from Mansuri to pay for the educational expenses of Vikrant who is currently studying aeronautical engineering from the Institute of Mechanical Engineering in Vidyanagar.
