A longing for the past and the lost homeland has inspired much of Salman Rushdie’s writing. Returning to where it all began and picking up the pieces of fragmented memories is a theme that permeates the acclaimed author’s works.
In ‘Imaginary Homelands’―the title piece in a collection of essays originally published in the London Review of Books on October 7, 1982―Rushdie begins by describing an old photograph that hangs on the wall of the room in London where he worked. It is a picture of his house in the city that was then Bombay, he writes. The sepia-toned photo was taken a year before he was born―1946. A few years before he wrote the essay, he had visited the house. Overwhelmed by the sight of it, he wanted to restore the past to himself and reclaim a history he felt was his despite the many years spent abroad.
Around the time the picture of the Mumbai home was taken, his father Anis Ahmed Rushdie had bought another house in the Civil Lines area of Delhi. Unlike the Mumbai home, Rushdie probably has little memory of the Delhi house. He never lived there. However, it is a house with its own story to tell―a property suit that has dragged on for close to five decades, which could very well be the oldest civil suit in the Delhi High Court.
Down to the deed
Four Flagstaff Road, Civil Lines, is a sprawling property spread over 5,373 square yards in what was originally a British township in Delhi. It was built in 1904, before Delhi became the capital of India. Anis had purchased the house from one Daulet Ram Gupta on January 31, 1945. A single-storey villa built in the Indo-European style with 16ft-high ceilings, it has an enormous front lawn and a smaller sit-out area at the back. Remnants of the colonial past still exist on its ceiling―there are slots for huge punkahs or hand-pulled fans, comprising long wooden frames covered with ornate cloth and pulled by a person sitting outside.
Behind tall gates, the house leads a quiet existence right next to a politically significant address―the official residence of the Delhi chief minister. It has retained much of its original Indo-European design. This could be because of the ongoing case. The nameplate on the gate reads ‘4 Bhiku Ram Jain House’, named so after the man who had originally entered into an agreement with Anis to buy the house.
Fighters till the end: Bhiku Ram Jain, a prominent Congress leader in Delhi, with former prime minister Rajiv Gandhi.
On December 22, 1970, Anis, who had by then left India with his family, entered into an agreement with Bhiku Ram Jain, a prominent Congress leader, to sell the entire property, comprising the main building, outhouses and lawns, for Rs3.75 lakh. An advance of Rs50,000 was paid to Anis by Bhiku Ram, who was then a tenant in the house, and the rest was to be paid over 15 months.
Bhiku Ram’s son Naren remembers the meetings Anis had with his father in late 1970, first to rent the house to him and later to sell it to him. “I was 16 years old and was present in the meeting between Anis Ahmed Rushdie and my father when he agreed to give the house to us on rent,” said Naren. “I remember taking his passport to see what the British passport looked like.”
One half of the Rushdie house was already rented to one Nanak Chand for Rs259 per month, and the other half was rented to the Jains for Rs300 per month. The Jains and the Chands continue to reside at the house as tenants, with a hedge on the front lawn demarcating their respective turfs.
According to Naren, shortly after his family had first moved into the house, Anis had suggested to his father that he buy the house. Anis had said that he was not planning on returning to India and hence wanted to sell the house. However, the agreement to sell was not executed. Bhiku Ram approached the Delhi High Court in 1977 with a petition seeking that the sale deed be executed.
According to court documents, the sale was stuck owing to a dispute between the two sides. To sell the property, Anis had to procure the income tax clearance within 12 months. Bhiku Ram was then, within three months, expected to pay the remainder of the price to Anis.
As per the agreement, Bhiku Ram was to pay the income tax department an amount not exceeding the total sale consideration to help Anis obtain the tax clearance certificate. Differences cropped up between Anis and Bhiku Ram over Anis’s purported letter asking Bhiku Ram to pay him Rs1 lakh towards securing the tax certificate. Bhiku Ram’s contention before the court was that he had agreed to deposit the money with the taxmen; giving it to Anis was not part of the deal.
A passport photograph of Anis Rushdie.
On October 5, 1983, a single-judge bench of the Delhi High Court ruled in favour of the Jains, asking Anis to execute the 1970 sale deed. However, in 1984, Anis appealed against the order in the high court. On October 31, 2011, a division bench of the high court set aside the 1983 order and dismissed the suit.
Bhiku Ram passed away in 2006, and as per court documents, his children―including his sons and co-plaintiffs in the case Naren and Arvind Jain―now represent his interests in court. On the other side, Anis, who was the sole defendant, had died in 1987, and was substituted in the case by his heirs―son Salman Rushdie and daughters Nabeelah S. Shah, Nevid Hartenstein and Samin Rushdie Momen. The last amended memo of parties in the case on record is of December 12, 2012. Also, Anis had on January 9, 1984, purportedly made a will, bequeathing the Civil Lines house to Samin, more popularly known as Sameen Rushdie. Sameen, who is settled in the UK, had come out with Indian Cookery (1988), a cookbook containing recipes from the Rushdie family kitchen―considered a classic in the genre.
The Jains challenged the high court order in the Supreme Court. The apex court delivered its judgment on December 3, 2012, directing that the sale deed be executed. But the top court took into account the time that had passed since the agreement was first signed, and said the property was to be sold to the Jains at 2012 prices. The court also directed the Delhi High Court to determine the market price expeditiously.
In its order passed on December 24, 2019, a single-judge bench of the Delhi High Court said that it had determined the market price of the house, as on December 3, 2012, at Rs130 crore. The Jains went back to the high court in appeal against the order. The high court reserved its order over the appeal on May 8 this year.
This December 5, a two-judge bench of the Delhi High Court gave its order on the Jains’ appeal. It set aside the order of the single judge bench, faulting it for the manner in which it had gone about in determining the market price. It sent back the matter to the single judge to determine the value of the property based on the directions issued by the Supreme Court.
Murkier and messier
Over time, the protracted court battle has turned into a many layered, convoluted tangle. While the original property suit is at the centre of it, complicating matters are allegations of fake deals, questions about a will drawn up by Anis pertaining to the house and accusations about the role of some of the lawyers who have represented the Rushdies in the case.
On December 18, 2012, an FIR was filed with the Economic Offences Wing of the Delhi Police by one Naresh Chopra, director of M/s Chopra Marketing Pvt Ltd, on behalf of the firm, in which he accused the lawyers representing the Rushdies of executing three agreements between May 2005 and October 2005 to sell the house on behalf of Salman Rushdie for 18 crore.
Close-knit: A 2016 photograph of Salman Rushdie with sister Sameen attending the Opera Theatre Of Saint Louis’s world premiere of Shalimar The Clown at Loretto-Hilton Center in Missouri | Getty Images
In his complaint, Chopra alleged that the lawyers―H.P. Singh and Vijay S.T. Shankardass―told him that Rushdie was the sole inheritor of the property and was authorised to sell it. He claimed that he made cash payments of 12.5 crore and 11 crore by way of two demand drafts in the name of Salman Rushdie. As per the complaint, on October 27, 2010, Chopra Marketing received a notice to cancel the agreement issued allegedly on behalf of Samin Abdul Momen (the complaint mentions her so). Chopra Marketing claimed that in the intervening period, Anis’s will naming Samin Abdul Momen as the sole inheritor of the property had come to light.
In the chargesheet that the police filed in the case before the Tis Hazari Court in Delhi, it claimed that Sameen had executed a power of attorney in favour of Shankardass on December 17, 1996, to sell the property. But the power of attorney, it said, was stamped and attested on September 25, 2000. It further said that Sameen had executed another power of attorney in favour of H.P. Singh to sell the property on September 29, 2006. Hence, as per the chargesheet, when Singh signed the first agreement with Chopra Marketing on May 9, 2005, he was not holding Sameen’s power of attorney.
The police further said that both Singh and Shankardass, being lawyers in the Rushdie appeal filed in the Delhi High Court in 1984, were aware that it was Sameen and not Rushdie who had inherited the home. According to the chargesheet, neither Singh nor Shankardass held Rushdie’s power of attorney in connection with the property.
The police produced bank statements of Sameen and Rushdie which showed that Rushdie transferred Rs1.08 crore to Sameen’s account by demand drafts between 2005 and 2008. The police said that the transfer of money has been acknowledged by both of them in the letters purportedly exchanged between them. While copies of these letters were placed on record, the police said, their veracity could not be confirmed as the Rushdie siblings could not be examined in the case.
According to the police, the bank accounts in Rushdie’s and Sameen’s names were opened by Shankardass exclusively to deposit the money received from the agreements. The police said that Rushdie’s account in Bank of Rajasthan―now ICICI, Janpath, New Delhi―was operated by Shankardass as his attorney. He is also the nominee and authorised signatory of Sameen’s account in the Bank of Rajasthan, Janpath, New Delhi, the police said in the chargesheet.
In the course of the police investigation, Anis’s will which named Sameen as the inheritor of the house also came into question. According to the chargesheet, during the probe, the authenticity of the will dated January 9, 1984 (registered on January 16, 1984) became suspect as Ramesh Chand Pandey, the witness of the will, denied his signature and said that he had never met or seen Anis. According to the chargesheet, advocate R.B. Gupta, a second witness of the will, also stated that he had never met Anis and the will was not written or signed in his presence. He said he had got the will registered in good faith on the reference of an advocate named Wadhwani.
Singh was arrested on June 15, 2016, and was released on bail the same day. Shankardass died during the course of investigation.
“It is completely out of order to state that my late father was involved in the making of any agreement that was fraudulent in nature or involved in any wrongdoing in the matter,” said Shankardass’s son Anirudh. “All the paperwork and agreements were carried out following the appropriate procedure. There is no justification for an allegation of this kind. No court has found fault with any agreement carried out by him.”
The police conveyed to the court that there was not sufficient evidence to chargesheet Rushdie. “Mr Salman Rushdie had neither authorised the accused person for this deal nor used this money or bank account. Hence, no sufficient evidence has come on record to chargesheet him in the case,” said the police in the chargesheet.
It said there was not enough evidence to chargesheet Sameen either, and pointed out that the money that was transferred to her account as part of the deal had not been used by her.
Meanwhile, on November 4, 2010, Shankardass and Singh had entered into an agreement with Fine Properties to sell the house on Sameen’s behalf for 14.5 crore. Fine Properties had then entered the frame, stepping into Sameen’s shoes in the case, claiming that Sameen had through a registered general power of attorney transferred all her rights and interest in the suit property in its favour. The Jains have, however, raised questions about the bone fides of Fine Properties and described it as “interlopers” and have even doubted the veracity of the general power of attorney.
Chopra Marketing also had, in its police complaint, raised questions about the role of Fine Properties in the matter, and named its directors as accused. One of the directors of Fine Properties, Ajay Gupta, was arrested in connection with the case on July 13, 2013, and was released on bail two days later. The police said in its chargesheet that they had not come across sufficient evidence to chargesheet two other functionaries of Fine Properties― Rajendra Prasad Jain and Abhishek Gupta.
Fine Properties further sold 1,500 square yards of the land to Rahul Jain, Amit Jain and Aruna Jain (not related to Bhiku Ram Jain) after the high court’s judgment in October 2011, which was in favour of the Rushdies.
Rahul Jain, Amit Jain and Aruna Jain had approached the Supreme Court in 2013, seeking impleadment in the case, arguing that they had been sold 1,500 square yards of the property while the special leave petition filed by Bhiku Ram’s family was being heard by the apex court. They had also sought clarification of the court’s judgment to mean that Sameen had been left with ownership of only 3,873 square yards of the property. The Supreme Court, however, dismissed the petition, stating that the facts on the basis of which the petition was made were not before the court at the time the judgment was rendered. It also said the applicants sought to reopen concluded issues and alteration of consequential directions which had attained finality. It said such a course of action was not permissible. Rahul Jain, Amit Jain and Aruna Jain then moved the Delhi High Court the same year, with a similar plea. However, the high court, too, rejected their petition through its order dated January 10, 2014, noting that “this application is misconceived and is gross abuse of process of law”. Chopra Marketing, too, approached the Delhi High Court in 2014, seeking that the agreement to sale signed with it in 2005 be honoured, and the case continues to be heard.
Advocate Sanjay Sharma Darmora, who has represented Sameen in the case since 2010 and is the lawyer for Fine Properties, too, in the matter, accused the Jains of raising doubts about the deal with Fine Properties as a tactic to delay the case proceedings. “The Jains themselves, in a review petition filed in the Supreme Court, acknowledged that Sameen had transferred her ownership rights to Fine Properties,” said Darmora. “She had filed an affidavit before the Delhi High Court in 2013 where she made it clear that she has nothing to do with the property since she had sold her rights to Fine Properties.”
As for Anis’s will, Darmora said, “The Jains have no locus standi to question the veracity of the will. If at all, the other legal heirs should raise an issue. But the will is genuine and the other legal heirs have given their NOCs.”
With regard to the Chopra cheating case, he said it was a “frivolous complaint”, and further asked how the allegations had any bearing on the question of determining the market value of the house. “The Jains can deposit the money and get the house transferred in their name. The court can determine if the title of Fine Properties is alright,” he said.
Silence and an appearance
The Rushdies have all along maintained an abiding silence with regard to the developments in the case, even seeking to distance themselves from the property in the rare comments that have emanated from their side.
The only time Sameen appeared before the Delhi High Court in the matter was on September 4 this year, and it was to provide proof of life. Also, it was after several orders were passed by the court seeking Sameen’s presence that she finally appeared before it through videoconference. In the last such order passed on August 25 this year, Justice Jyoti Singh of the high court had refused to accept the contention of Sameen’s lawyers that she had not appeared before the court as she feared for her life and had security issues.
The matter pertained to the question of whether Sameen was dead or alive, which the Delhi High Court dealt with for close to two years. An application was moved in the court in 2022 by Rajendra Prasad Jain, as director of Fine Properties, asserting that Sameen had died. Sameen’s lawyers had informed the court that she was alive and well, but the court insisted on Sameen appearing before it so that the issue of whether she was dead or alive could be settled.
“This court wonders what kind of security threat can one face while appearing through VC. To this Court, it prima facie appears that efforts are being made to evade the orders of the Court and this becomes pronounced since the status of Defendent No 1 (D), as to whether she is dead or alive is already shrouded in mystery,” the court said. It further said it was left with no option but to resort to coercive steps to ensure Sameen’s presence.
During the videoconference appearance, Sameen told the court that she has nothing to do with nor has she had anything to do with the property in question in over 10 years. The court exempted her from further appearance at this stage, until further orders.
Earlier, the police had informed the Tis Hazari court in the Chopra case that during the course of the investigation, notices under Section 160 (police officer’s power to require attendance of witnesses) and Section 91 (summons to produce a document or any other object necessary for investigation, inquiry or trial) of the CrPC were sent to Rushdie and Sameen through the Union home ministry but they did not respond. It said that further effort was made to examine Rushdie and Sameen and a Letter of Rogatory seeking legal assistance from the UK was sent and according to the reply that was received on September 7, 2016, Sameen had contacted the UK Police and revealed that “she was fully aware of the history of the allegation, going back over 30 years, and stated that as far as she was concerned, the matter is concluded and she would not be willing to provide her statement in the case”. She further revealed that Rushdie now permanently resides in the US.
The Delhi High Court, while hearing the suit filed by Chopra Marketing, had issued summons to Rushdie, Sameen and the other legal heirs on more than one occasion since 2015. The court had in 2019 directed the government to publish the summons on the websites of the Indian High Commission in the UK and the Indian Embassy in the US.
Naren Jain said that he had tried to get in touch with Sameen and her daughters, but did not receive any response from them.
THE WEEK sent messages to Sameen on her email address listed in court documents, on Facebook and on Instagram, seeking to get her side of the story. But there was no response. Rushdie was not available for comments, his agent said in reply to THE WEEK’s email seeking a response from him.
According to a source close to the Rushdies, it was with a heavy heart that they had decided to detach themselves from the property. As the Rushdie siblings get older, it was felt by them that it would be preferable to dissociate the family from the endless legal fight, hence the decision by Sameen to transfer her rights on the house. As far as the Rushdies are concerned, the house is not theirs anymore, the source said.
The house in Civil Lines that Anis had bought, meanwhile, continues to be trapped in a legal maze.