Rogue landlords slapped with fines (From This Is Local London)

Chiswick landlord fined for illegally evicting tenants

3:11pm Tuesday 24th August 2010 in Where I Live By Ian Mason

Two rogue landlords who illegally evicted tenants from their homes - forcing some to sleep on the street - have been slapped with hefty fines.

Zahid Malik and Ram Mahendran were both convicted in separate court cases of unlawfully evicting tenants who had properly paid their rents and obeyed the terms of their tenancies.

Malik, of Devonshire Road, Chiswick, was fined £2,500 and ordered to pay £750 costs after a jury took just 20 minutes to find him guilty at Kingston Crown Court last month.

His tenants, a trainee accountant and his wife, were locked out of their Southfields home without warning, had belongings confiscated - and were forced to sleep rough for a night under the awning of a street flower seller's stall.

South Western Magistrates' Court was told that Mahendran, of Sudbury Hill, Harrow, rented a property in Ibsley Gardens, Roehampton, to a postgraduate student, who asked for a faulty washing machine, shower, smoke alarm and broken window to be repaired.

In response, Mahendran emailed the tenant ordering him to leave and subsequently changed the locks while the student was out.

The tenant spent the night in the computer work room at his university and was only allowed to reclaim his belongings and £180 deposit two days later, the court was told.

Mahendran was fined £2,500 and ordered to pay £4,274 towards Wandsworth Council housing department's prosecution costs.