Shikhar Dhawan's ex-wife, Aesha Mukherjee, to return Rs 5.7 crore; here’s why the ruling went in his favour and what the case is about

A court has directed the former wife of cricketer Shikhar Dhawan to refund nearly Rs 5.7 crore, ruling that the orders issued by an Australian family court under the concept of "property settlement" are inconsistent with Indian law and cannot be enforced in India, Times of India reported.

Family court judge Devender Kumar Garg further stated that she could not claim Rs 16.9 crore as granted by the Australian court. The judge observed that the idea of "property settlement" under the Family Law Act 1975 was alien to Indian matrimonial statutes, including the Hindu Marriage Act 1955.

The court noted that under Australian law, all of a husband's assets are placed into a "marital pool", and the court may award up to 60% of total properties in India and overseas to the wife. In Dhawan’s case, the Australian court invoked Section 79 of the 1975 Act to order the payment of AU $8,12,397.50 from the sale of property.


The judge also recorded that the former wife did not appear before the court. He observed that the Australian court had directed Dhawan to pay the sale proceeds of two properties in Australia under "interim property settlement", which the cricketer claimed he had not consented to.

Additionally, the court held that Dhawan successfully established that AU $82,000 was forcibly retained.

In other news, Former India opener Shikhar Dhawan, affectionately known as “Gabbar,” has begun a new chapter in his personal life by marrying his longtime girlfriend Sophie Shine. The couple exchanged vows in an intimate ceremony held in the Delhi-NCR region on February 21, 2026.

Dhawan, who stepped away from international cricket in 2024, kept the wedding a private affair, with only close friends, family members, and a few personalities from the cricketing community in attendance.

The wedding follows his divorce from former wife Aesha Mukherjee. The two were married for 11 years and share a son, Zoravar.

According to Bar and Bench, the couple tied the knot in 2012, and Dhawan alleged that soon after their marriage, his wife began threatening him, saying she would circulate “fabricated, defamatory and false” material to tarnish his reputation and ruin his cricket career.

He informed the Court that he had purchased properties using his own funds, but claimed that his wife pressured him into registering the assets in their joint names. The Court was also told that she was made the 99% owner of one of the properties he had acquired.