Hello,
We live in Bangalore and have a house in Mysore.
We have rented a house to a tenant from June 2009. Initially an agreement of 11 months was made with the tenant. Since we stay in Bangalore and it was not possible for us to collect the rent personally every month,so we had given the tenant our bank account number and asked him to deposit to our account. Though this instruction of depositing the rent to account was not mentioned in the agreement and was told to him orally. He was prompt in doing so for the first one year..Since we did not have any issues with the tenant, we allowed him to continue in the house even after the expiry of the rental agreement period. We did not renew the rental agreement. After few months he was not regular at paying the rent..Whenever we asked, he used to give excuses saying that he is having some financial problem and he will pay the arrear rent together...Sometimes he used to pay 2 or 3 months rent together..But from last Nov 2012, he hasnt paid any rent. Since he was paying 2-3 months rent together, And adding up all the arrears he hadnt paid, we found out that he hadnt paid for last 15 months. If we try to contact him over phone, he doesnt receive our call..If we change our number and call then he would receive and if we ask him, he would say that he would pay..We even went to the house several times, but he would never get to speak to us directly. He would make his wife say that he is not at home though he will be inside. They never let us inside the house. Once we waited outside the house for the whole day to meet him. But he did not turn up..Some people came to cajole us saying that they are his relatives and that they will tell him to settle the arrears within 2 days and so..But even they failed to keep up their word..If we contacted them, they would say that he needed some more time..
And one day we received a notice from the lawyer of the tenant saying that we are harassing the tenant despite of paying rent correctly every month and we are creating galata in front of the house and it is disturbing their peaceful living....He even sent a Money order of June month's rent along with the notice. But we did not accept the MO. We sent reply to the notice that the tenant has mislead the advocate and has not paid the rent and we want the house vacated by the end of August giving him a notice period of 2 months for vacating the house. We even went to Mysore and lodged a complaint against him in the police station area of the house. The police made him come to the station. At the station he started arguing that he has paid all the rent and he had sent the latest rent through MO which we did not accept. We told that only the latest one he sent through MO and previous months he hadnt paid.For which he started telling that we were personally coming and collecting cash from him every month and we were not giving receipt for the same and he also did not ask for the receipt. We told the police that he is lying, but they sent us off saying that it is a civil issue and they cannot help..
We called him so many times to solve this issue, but he is not ready to talk with us directly..He is using a mediator to talk to us..When we met this mediator, he told us that his client i.e., the tenant is saying that he has paid all the rent up to date and only past 3 months rent is pending..We told the mediator the same that he is lying. In reply he told that if we go to court, there also the court will settle for the last 3 months only and even court will not accept that we have left the tenant for not paying the rent for 15 months..
So please guide us what we should do?
(i) Is it true that the court will settle only for 3 months?
(ii) Cant we get the 15 months arrear rent? His arrears has crossed the advance amount which we had taken from him at the time when he started living in the house. Now as the mediator is saying if court will settle only for 3 months, which he might pay, then it will bring to a situation that we might have to give back the Advance amount which we had taken from him..But his arrears are more than the Advance amount...So in this case what should we do??
(iii) He doesnt have proof that he has paid the rent, will court accept his version that he was not receiving the receipt from us.
(iv) We want him to vacate the house immediately. We had already sent him the notice saying that we want the house vacated by August end. But he is not moving out, What should we do for that??
Please help us what steps should we take next...
