By Amala Dasarathi
We’ve all heard stories of crazy PG landlords and landladies – ones who moral police, ones who fleece, ones who think adult women need extra rules because they are a liability and need to be monitored. Well, we just came across another crazy one, thanks to Pinjra Tod.
This week, a group of nine female students in Delhi decided to fight back against their terrible PG landlord. The women were refused tenancy agreements and receipts for rent paid and asked to pay inflated electricity bills by their landlord. They were subjected to daily moral policing, surveillance and abuse at the hands of the landlord and his family.
The landlord went to the women’s room at midnight, demanding that they pay their electricity bill. Sick of the harassment, the women decided to leave the PG in the morning, but were stopped by the landlord, who confiscated their luggage and even pushed one of them down the stairs. The women promptly called the police. Following this, the landlord locked them out of their rooms and called their parent to discuss their ‘drinking’ and ‘smoking’ habits, just like hostel wardens do. He also refused to let them back into their rooms, claiming they would bring drugs with them.
But the women held their ground, and eventually won their fight! The landlord returned their security deposit, which he was withholding from them. The women are also filing a complaint with the NDPL for fraud for their inflated electricity bills.
Pinjra Tod is compiling a blacklist of PGs, and have asked people to send them their stories.
Are you a female student anywhere in the country with PG horror stories of your own? We want to hear all about it. Write to us at fingerzine [at] gmail [com].
June 17, 2016 at 12:51 pm
A PG in Mumbai near cheera bazaar on the very Metro chowk is one such horrible PG, the landlord is exactly the way as mentioned in the article above, only issue is he charge lesser charges than other nearby pgs which makes theneedy girls weak at knees and they never dared to stanf before him. The landlord is invasive, intruding, insulting, harrasing, abusove and mentally torturing character. The PG is popularly known as Mistry PG. The worst part is that the property on which the PG is made is disputed and is legally not approved to be commercially exploited but landlord is probably managing the authorities on this one. Even worse is that the PG is on 4th floor and the ground floor is a shabby and unhygeinic godown. The PG is thus home to rhodents and all sorts of disease causing organisms. The baai in the PG never cleans the rooms amd the rooms have layers of years of dust. The PG is a horror house all together. The landlord at his whims and wishes picks up a girl and keeps abusing and troubling her for sometime… Which means for that very time the life for that girl becomes miserable because she could be called anytime of the day or night by the landlord to his home which is on the 2nd floor of the building and then will be abused verbally by him along with being allegated for all sorts of things like lying, coming late at night, disturbing other girls, using heavy electrical equipments which is causing big bills, theft etc. All this will be done by landlord by taking another girls name that she told this to the landlord… This not only mentally agonise the suffering girl but also brings her in bad terms with the other girl whose name landlord takes.