Kerala adivasi family sleeps outside as financier attaches home over ₹2 lakh loan

Kasaragod: For the past six nights, Sindhu (36) has been sleeping outside her own home. On the sit-out of their 500 sq ft house at Kottakunnu Unnathi, a Malavettuva Scheduled Tribe settlement in East Eleri’s Kadumeni ward, she, her three children and her elderly father spread out mats after dark.

The door behind them is sealed. A yellow notice pasted on the unplastered wall spells out its legal status: attached, and out of bounds for the family after they failed to repay a ₹2 lakh loan.

“Food comes from our tharavad (family house). Luckily, the toilet is outside,” Sindhu said. “At night, we sleep here.”

On April 23, while Sindhu was at work, a court-appointed lawyer evicted her three children and took possession of the house.

Sindhu's husband, Jayan K D (38), took the loan from Mahindra Rural Housing Finance Limited on May 30, 2018, to renovate the house. After repeated defaults, the loan has ballooned to ₹5.40 lakh. Sindhu dropped out after Class III, and Jayan after Class VII.

The house itself came up between 2010 and 2015 with government assistance of ₹4 lakh. Jayan, a woodcutter, had taken the additional loan to improve it. Work took him to Panathur; he now returns home only occasionally. He has not come back since the house was attached.

According to court documents filed by Mahindra Rural Housing Finance, the loan had become a non-performing asset by August 3, 2019, when the dues stood at ₹4.94 lakh. A demand notice issued on November 11, 2022, asked the family to repay ₹3.01 lakh within 60 days. The amount continued to mount.

In January, Mahindra Rural Housing Finance then moved the Chief Judicial Magistrate’s Court in Kasaragod under the Securitisation and Reconstruction of Financial Assets and Enforcement of Security Interest Act, 2002 (SARFAESI Act), seeking to take possession of the house and the five cents of land on which it stands.

On January 13, 2026, Chief Judicial Magistrate Rajeevan Vachal recorded that the lender had complied with the statutory requirements under Section 13 of the Act and appointed an Advocate Commissioner, Adv Chaitanya M A, to take possession of the secured asset.

The order was executed on April 23.

However, panchayat president Joseph Mutholil, a practising lawyer, argues that the attachment cuts against a basic legal protection.

Section 60 (c) of the Code of Civil Procedure protects the dwelling house of daily wage labourers from attachment, he said. The protection covers not just the structure but also the land it stands on and the space necessary to use it. “Recovery cannot make a labourer homeless. The law protects them,” Mutholil said.

That protection under Section 60 of the CPC is also embedded in Section 31(g) of the SARFAESI Act. “To obtain the attachment order, the company may not have placed these facts before the court, that they are labourers and this is their only house,” Mutholil said.

Sindhu and Jayan own no other property. The land, five cents inherited by Jayan, holds their only house, built in Sindhu’s name.

Three-term panchayat member Mercy Mani remembers helping the family secure that house during her 2010-2015 tenure as Kadumeni ward's representative. But Sindhu's plight is not an isolated case.

“There are 15 families in this settlement. Except for two or three, most are caught in debt,” she said. “We came to know about this only after the house was taken.”

Kerala’s Single Dwelling Place Protection Act, 2025, was meant for situations like this, where families risk losing their only home over small loans. It sets clear eligibility conditions: no other property, a loan amount below ₹5 lakh, and total outstanding, including interest and penalties, below ₹10 lakh. “Sindhu meets all those criteria,” Mutholil said. He has offered legal help. But as Jayan is away, documents are hard to gather, he said.

As the legal questions take shape, life continues in the sit-out. “Since the switches are inside, we cannot turn the sit-out light on,” said Sindhu. “But they did not turn off the kitchen light, and I'm sure the electricity bill will rise next month,” she said.

Her father sits through most of the day on the same sitout, where they sleep at night.

Ask his age, and Sindhu pauses. “Thirty… maybe forty,” she said, unsure.

Her elder sister Narayani loses her cool. “Are you mad? He is 79.”

Sindhu, half-smiling, half-embarrassed, said: “Yes, 79. That's what Achan claims.”

That small confusion says it all, a family left to deal with laws and loan papers they do not fully understand, while their home remains locked behind them.