Mumbai, April 2 A farmer from the Pune district has filed a civil lawsuit against Bollywood actress Sonali Bendre and her filmmaker husband Goldie Behl, accusing them of trespassing on their land and engaging in "mafia-style" intimidation.
Bendre, however, denied the allegations, stating that it was an attempt to extort money as her name was not mentioned in any of the land purchase documents.
The complainants – Chandrakant Balu Shinde (50) and his mother Kamalbai (75) – claim that the celebrity couple was using their social influence and seeking help from the local police to forcibly take possession of their 30 'guntha' (over 32,000 square feet) of land in Uksan village in the Maval taluka of the district.
The lawsuit was filed against the celebrity couple and two others through advocate Vanraj Shinde last month before a civil court at Vadgaon Maval. The matter will next be heard on April 24.
According to the lawsuit, the Shinde family has been cultivating the land as "protected tenants" since the 1940s.
The family alleged that their names were illegally removed from revenue records in the 1980s without any prior notice.
The dispute began when the original owners allegedly sold the land to a local individual in 2012, who subsequently sold a portion of it to Goldie Behl in March 2021.
The aggrieved mother-son duo claimed these sales were "illegal and void" because their pre-existing tenancy rights were never legally terminated.
The plaintiffs have also made claims of intimidation and police bias.
The Shinde family alleged that on December 14, 2025, Sonali Bendre and Goldie Behl arrived at the site with workers and heavy machinery to begin unauthorized construction.
When Kamalbai tried to stop the work, she was allegedly threatened. The police officers at the site also threatened to frame the mother-son duo in false theft cases if they continued to "harass" the celebrity couple, the lawsuit claimed.
Bendre, however, said her name is not there on any documents related to the Maval land purchase.
This is a false case orchestrated solely to extort money, her lawyer Raju Shinde said.
