hey was doing a silly mistake. tried the above code . it works! thanks for the help

use strict;
use warnings;
use Data::Dumper;
use XML::DOM;

my $parser=new XML::DOM::Parser;

my $doc=$parser->parsefile('C:\perl\perl_tests\xmlin2.xml') or die$!;
my $root=$doc->getDocumentElement();

my @address=$root->getElementsByTagName("address");
foreach my $address(@address)
{
    if($address->getAttribute("name") eq "Joey")
    {
        if(my $item=$address->getElementsByTagName("item")->item(0))
        {
            if(my $data=$item->getElementsByTagName("data")->item(0))
            {
            $item->removeChild($data);
            my @list=$item->getChildNodes;        
                foreach my $list(@list)
                {
                    if($list->getNodeType==TEXT_NODE)
                    {
                    $item->removeChild($list);
                    }
                }                    
            }
        }
    }
}    
$doc->setXMLDecl($doc->createXMLDecl('1.0','UTF-8'));
$doc->printToFile("C:/perl/perl_tests/xmlin2.xml");
$doc->dispose;
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