Property dispute involving Anis Rushdie lands reaches SC after 35 years

NEW DELHI: A Delhi family’s battle against the Rushdie clan over a property worth crores in Delhi’s Civil Lines has reached the Supreme Court, 35 years after it first hit the courts.

Anis Rushdie, celebrated writer Salman Rushdie’s father, signed an agreement in 1970 to sell the property spread over thousands of acres to his then tenant Bhiku Ram Jain, a businessman and former Congress member of Parliament who is close to the late Prime Minister Indira Gandhi.

Rushdie senior agreed to sell the property, rented out then to Jain at a princely sum of Rs300, for a price of Rs3,75,000. Jain paid Rs50,000 as earnest money to seal the deal. The rest was to be paid when the sale deed was to be registered.

Jain claimed later that the deal was to be registered after Anis, who migrated to Britain in 1963, got the necessary tax clearances, something he failed to do.
Anis on his part claimed that he wrote to Jain several times asking for a consideration of Rs1,00,000 to follow up the issue over the tax clearances, but heard nothing from Jain.

Jain also contested this and argued that anyway he would not have paid Anis directly without violating forex laws as he had by then become a non-resident Indian.
Jain claimed that instead he settled the tax dues of Anis without which 4, Flagstaff Road, would have been auctioned by the income tax authorities. In 1977, Jain finally filed a suit of specific performance against Anis in a Delhi court to execute the sale deed.

The case was decreed in Jain’s favour, but Salman Rushdie challenged it and got a stay on it. After Anis (died in 1987) and Jain passed away on (November 2006), their legal heirs stepped into their shoes.

The case reached the Supreme Court last week. The Jains are now presenting their side of the story to the court, through senior counsel Shanti Bhushan.
They claim that the property was sold again in 2012 while the case was pending in the courts by Salman Rushdie to a builder. The Rushdies are yet to present their side of the story.

The property also has other claimants — third parties who claim a part of the property once spread over 5,000 acres was sold to them and builders who make similar claims.

This is not the first legal battle Rushdie junior is fighting in India over property. He successfully reclaimed Anis Villa, a two-storeyed heritage building in Solan, Himachal Pradesh , from the state government after a three-year battle.