“When he doesn’t get his way, he starts writing letters and tries to intimidate and coerce people into doing what he wants,” he told Dr. Paes on the witness stand.

But she insisted: “It was the other way around, they harassed us.”

“You couldn’t get what you wanted,” Sandham continued. “What he wanted was separate access to develop his back garden.”

Addressing the judge, he said: “The Paes only bought their house in 2006.

“About 14 years later, they came to believe, or at least tried to pretend they believed, in their right to…the disputed strip.”

Dr Paes first raised the boundary shift issue in 2016 when she complained that one of her previous neighbors had erected a fence in the wrong place, the court heard, while a gate giving Paes access was also raised. deleted later.

From the witness stand, Dr Paes said: “There used to be a big gap we could go through to hold the wall, the problem for me arose after July 2015 when we were blocked off and had no access.”

The lawyer suggested that Dr. Paes had “dramatized” the summer 2015 tension with her neighbors, insisting that “her neighbors made no concerted effort to steal her land.”

The Paes’ lawyer, Norah Modha, said her clients are seeking a court order marking the boundary in their favor, along with an injunction “with respect to buildings, structures, or objects on land determined to be within his title”.

After four days in court, Recorder Green reserved judgment in the case.