NEW DELHI: A City Court today directed the DCP East to start attachment proceedings of the properties of actor Raghubir Yadav who has allegedly failed to pay the interim monthly maintenance of Rs 40,000 to his estranged wife.

Metropolitan Magistrate Vandana Jain directed the Police that a warrant of attachment of properties of Yadav should be issued and the default proceedings must be carried out seriously.

The Court gave directions for default proceedings after Yadav failed to comply with the Court orders to pay the maintenance to his estranged wife Poornima Yadav, He was earlier directed by the Delhi Court to pay Rs 20,000 as maintenance to his wife but he had refused to do that as well. Yadav was arrested on charges of non payment of arrears also but had managed to come out of jail after three days by paying a partial amount of the total dues of Rs 1.4 million to 1.5 million dues.

Yadav had alleged that Poornima works as a dance teacher with the National School of Drama (NSD) and earned around Rs 1.2 million per annum. The Court had however rejected Yadav‘s contention saying that it cannot be overlooked that their son was in the custody of Poornima from the time they had separated and that she had been meeting the expenses of his education and maintenance.

Assessing the income of Yadav, Metropolitan Magistrate Sunaina Sharma had held that Yadav is a renowned actor of art movies, TV serials and theatre and is doing well in commercial cinema. After his success in his two latest hits ‘Peepli Live‘ and ‘Gandhi to Hitler‘, his monthly income would have gone up, the court had said, and enhanced the monthly maintenance for Poornima. The court had also ruled that the actor will have to pay the maintenance from the date of its present order till the disposal of the case.

It also asked him to pay her Rs 20,000 from the date of filing of the petition in 2006 till the present order, besides another sum of Rs 20,000 per month for maintenance of his son, now a minor, from the date of filing of the petition till becomes a major.

Poornima in her plea had told the court that she had married Yadav in Jabalpur in June 1988 but he deserted her in 1995. She said she had been living with their son in Delhi, so the Supreme Court had allowed that her case be tried in Delhi.