New Delhi: Nestled amidst vibrant bougainvillea vines on one side and the heavily guarded official residence of Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal on the other, the weathered black gates of 4, Flagstaff Road in Delhi’s Civil Lines may easily escape notice.
Behind these unassuming gates, however, lies a historic property, lost in a labyrinth of legal disputes— and intrigues— spanning over five decades.
Built in the early 1900s, the sprawling single-storey bungalow, surrounded by manicured lawns, once belonged to Anis Ahmed Rushdie, father of acclaimed Booker Prize-winning novelist Salman Rushdie.
The Rushdie family, as is widely known, spent much of their time in Bombay (now Mumbai) and rented out the charming property.
Back in 1970, the year when the trouble began, there were two tenants — advocate Nanak Chand and Congressman Bhiku Ram Jain, who paid a monthly rent of Rs 259 and Rs 300 respectively, according to property records seen by ThePrint.
At some point, Jain decided to buy the property and Rushdie appears to have been ready to sell — at least initially.
“I was 16 when I saw the deal happen between my father and Anis Rushdie,” recalled Bhiku Jain’s son Naren Jain, speaking to ThePrint in the backyard of 4, Flagstaff Road. I’ve played in these gardens, this house has hosted several parties, with ministers, MPs, CMs, even former PMs in attendance.”
However, while Anis Rushdie agreed to sell the house to Bhiku Jain for the sum of Rs 3.75 lakh in December 1970, the deal fell through and a monumental legal battle began.
This case, in fact, may well be the oldest civil suit pending in the Delhi High Court (HC) — with at least seven legal claims being made over the 5,373 sq yard (1.12 acre) property over the past half-century.
The battle has also been as tortuous as it was protracted, complete with allegations of bogus sale deals, a “fake” will, and even mysterious claims and counter-claims about the “death” of Anis Rushdie’s daughter — cookbook author Sameen Rushdie — to whom the house was bequeathed by her father.
Indeed, these feuds have traversed the entire judicial hierarchy, from Tis Hazari Court to the Delhi HC to the Supreme Court, with even Delhi Police getting involved at one point.
Currently, an appeal against a Delhi High Court order valuing the property at Rs 130 crore is pending before a division bench of the HC.
“This is one of the oldest cases pending in the Delhi High Court, and this delay should be attributed to the Jains,” alleged advocate Sanjay Sharma Darmora, who said he has represented Sameen Rushdie in the case since 2010. “No litigant should be permitted to delay any proceedings like this.”
Significantly, Darmora also represents Fine Properties Private Ltd, a company that claims it bought the house from Sameen Rushdie in 2010 — which is something that the Jains are contesting in court.
To Naren Jain, it is “interlopers” who are engaged in”frivolous litigation”.
Meanwhile, the house remains stuck in time. The nameplate beside the gate reads ‘4, Bhiku Ram Jain House’. But the Chand family too continues to live here.
The front lawn is divided by a hedge that serves as a boundary, demarcating the residences of the Chand and Jain families.
The two families use separate entrances and their paths do not cross often, members of both families said.
The Jain family claim they inhabit their section of the house as tenants and are currently fighting a court battle over their tenancy rights, in addition to the one over ownership.
No one from the Chand family was willing to comment. It is uncertain if they are occupying their quarters under a tenancy agreement or if they pay rent.
As the dispute winds on, ThePrint examines the twists and turns it has taken so far through legal documents and interviews with some of the involved parties.
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An incomplete sale
On 31 January, 1945, Anis Ahmed Rushdie, a lawyer and businessman, acquired Bungalow Number 4 on Flagstaff Road, according to the property agreement.
Two years later, on 19 June, 1947, his son Ahmed Salman Rushdie, now known just as Salman Rushdie, was born in Bombay. He was one among four siblings, the others being sisters Sameen, Nevid, and Nabeelah.
Fast forward to 1970, when the legal saga began in Delhi. On 22 December 1970, Anis Rushdie entered into an agreement — seen by ThePrint — to sell this property for a total amount of Rs 3,75,000 to Bhiku Jain. Of this amount, Jain had paid Rs 50,000 to Rushdie.
However, a dispute over the modalities of an official formality caused the deal to fall apart, court documents show.
According to the agreement, Rushdie was required to obtain a tax clearance certificate from the income tax authorities for the property sale. He was also required to provide Jain with a copy of the certificate within 12 months. After this, Jain was expected to make the remaining payment within three months. It was within this 15-month span, therefore, that Rushdie was required to execute the sale deed.
So far, so good — but the agreement also stated that Jain was to pay the income tax authorities an amount specified by Rushdie, to assist in obtaining the tax clearance certificate. It was these additional payments that became a point of contention between the two parties, court documents show.
While Rushdie claimed to have written letters demanding an additional amount of Rs 1 lakh so that he could furnish a bank guarantee for the necessary tax clearance, the Jains maintained that they were only required to pay the sum directly to the income tax authorities, and not to Rushdie.
In 1977, Jain and his sons, Naren and Arvind, filed a lawsuit before the Delhi High Court, seeking “specific performance” of the agreement. This legal action aimed to compel Rushdie to fulfill his contractual obligation as outlined in the agreement. The matter remains unsettled to date.
While the Delhi High Court ruled in favour of the Jains on 5 October 1983, the Rushdies filed an appeal challenging this decision in 1984, setting the stage for a decades-long legal battle.
Today, Bhiku Jain’s sons Naren Jain and Arvind Kumar Jain are fighting for the ownership of this house. From the Rushdie side, the case has been fought under the names of Anis’s son Salman, and daughters Sameen Rushdie Momen, Nevid Hartenstein, and Nabeelah S. Shah, according to court documents seen by ThePrint.
Through exile
While the dispute over the Delhi house dragged on, the Rushdie clan went through tumultuous circumstances in the 1980s and 90s.
Anis Rushdie died in 1987, but in January 1984, he had purportedly executed a will leaving the house on 4 Flagstaff Road to his daughter Sameen. His widow Nergin and other children gave a no-objection certificate in favour of Sameen in 1990, according to documents seen by ThePrint.
During this time, several other notable events unfolded for the family. Sameen Rushdie gained recognition for her cookbook, Sameen Rushdie’s Indian Cookery, published in the UK in August 1988.
Just a month later, her brother Salman’s controversial fourth novel, The Satanic Verses, was released, with cataclysmic consequences for him.
In 1989, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the late ‘Supreme Leader’ of Iran, issued a fatwa calling for Salman Rushdie’s execution, as well as the elimination of all editors or publishers involved in the book’s production, including translations.
As a result, Salman Rushdie spent the next decade moving from house to house, with the constant presence of an armed police protection team.
Notably, Rushdie’s birth country, India, became the first to ban The Satanic Verses in October 1988 and reportedly refused to grant him a travel visa for at least 10 years.
“It is puzzling that I should spend my life writing about India and be so unwelcome there,” Rushdie was quoted as saying in a September 1995 interview with India Today in London.
Meanwhile, the appeal for the Delhi house continued to linger unresolved throughout Rushdie’s exile and eventual return to public life.
Bhiku Ram Jain, the other party to the dispute, passed away in 2006, according to his son Naren.
Finally, on 31 October, 2011, a division bench of the Delhi High Court ruled in favour of the Rushdie family. However, this ruling faced further challenges from the Jain family and was eventually taken up before the Supreme Court the following year.
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7 years, 100 hearings, Rs 130 crore
The Supreme Court gave its ruling on the Delhi house in 2012 — the year that Rushdie published his memoir Joseph Anton, describing his life in hiding for more than a decade after the fatwa.
On 3 December that year, the Supreme Court opined that the Jains were, in fact, “ready and willing” to perform their side of the agreement. It also said that Rushdie was “not justified” in insisting that Jain should make further payments directly to him and not to the income tax authorities.
However, the Supreme Court directed that the sale should be made on the “market price” of the property.
Lacking sufficient information to assess its current value accurately, the apex court entrusted the task to the Delhi High Court.
In doing so, it took note of the “long efflux of time (over 40 years) that has occurred and the galloping value of real estate in the meantime”.
Consequently, the case was returned to the Delhi High Court, which took seven more years to determine the property’s market value. The case came up before the high court over a hundred times in these seven years.
Finally, in December 2019, the Delhi High Court declared that the market price of the property to be Rs 130 crore, as of 3 December, 2012 — indeed quite a gallop from the original 1970 sale price of Rs 3.75 lakh.
Not pleased with this ruling, the Jains appealed before a division bench of the high court. The HC reserved its orders on the appeal on 8 May this year.
A fake will?
In a twist to the ongoing legal saga, allegations have emerged that certain lawyers carried on “proxy litigation” on behalf of the Rushdies — possibly without the latter’s knowledge.
One such allegation came from a company called Chopra Marketing Pvt Ltd, which claimed that two lawyers — H.P. Singh and V.S.T. Shankardass — executed three agreements to sell the property on behalf of Salman Rushdie in 2005.
What raised eyebrows was that both lawyers were actively involved in the appeal for the case pending in the Delhi High Court at the time, wherein it was established that Sameen Rushdie was the lawful owner of the property, not Salman.
Both lawyers, therefore, held power of attorney on behalf of Sameen, not Salman, making their actions questionable.
During the course of the purported transactions, Naresh Chopra, director of Chopra Marketing, claimed to have made payments of Rs 3.5 crore in cash and Rs 1 crore through bank drafts for the property, according to court documents.
The two lawyers eventually backed out of the deal on 23 October, 2010, according to court documents.
However, in November 2010, the lawyers allegedly ‘sold’ the property to Fine Properties Pvt. Ltd for Rs 12.6 crore. This company has since featured in the 4 Flagstaff Road case multiple times.
In December 2012, an FIR was filed based on a complaint by Naresh Chopra, director of Chopra Marketing Pvt Ltd, against the two lawyers with the Economic Offences Wing of the Delhi Police. In August 2018, the chargesheet was presented before court.
This chargesheet, which ThePrint has accessed, accuses the lawyers and Ajay Gupta, director of Fine Properties, of cheating, forgery, and criminal conspiracy. “(They) entered into criminal conspiracy to fraudulently sale the property in question and duped unsuspecting people (sic),” the document says.
It also contends that H.P. Singh and V.S.T. Shankardass executed the agreements on behalf of Salman Rushdie “without having any authority from him and without his knowledge”.
Further, it even raises doubts regarding the “authenticity of the will of Anis Ahmed Rushdie”, claiming that one witness denied ever signing it and the other stated that the will was neither written nor signed in his presence.
The chargesheet notes that Indian authorities attempted to contact Salman and Sameen through the Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA).
In September 2016, the chargesheet says, Sameen informed the UK police that “as far as she was concerned the matter is concluded and she would not be willing to provide her statement in this case”.
While the trial for this case is pending in the capital’s Tis Hazari court, Chopra Marketing also filed a suit in 2014 in the Delhi HC against the Rushdies seeking enforcement of the purported agreement to sell the property.
This suit is also pending, with the court having tried multiple times to issue summons to the four Rushdie siblings. Court documents show that the HC even directed for the summons to be published in any newspaper with international circulation in the UK and US, and also on the websites of the Indian high commissions in those countries.
Sameen Rushdie— ‘deceased’ or not?
Last year, an application was filed in the Delhi High Court by advocate Manashwy Jha, claiming that Sameen Rushdie had passed away and was survived by two daughters— Mishka and Maya Momen. Jha had claimed that he had filed this application “on behalf of the power of attorney holder” of Sameen Momen Rushdie.
Jha’s application was accompanied by an affidavit from one Rajinder Prasad Jain stating that Sameen Rushdie was deceased. Rajinder Jain claimed to be a director of Fine Properties Pvt Limited— the same company that claimed to have bought the property.
On 11 October 2022, the Delhi High Court heard this application and ordered that Jha, who had not provided a death certificate, should do so.
During this hearing, advocate Sanjay Darmora, who appeared on behalf of Sameen Rushdie, expressed unawareness of her death during the proceedings.
Again, on 31 January 2023, the High Court took up the matter of Sameen Rushdie’s purported death and Rajinder Prasad Jain’s contention that her legal heirs should be brought on record.
In this hearing, the court noted that advocate Jha had still not provided a copy of the death certificate. It further observed that Sameen Rushdie’s advocate Sanjay Darmora had submitted that she “has not expired”.
Keeping these factors in view, the court dismissed the application.
Speaking to ThePrint, Darmora said that he represented Sameen Rushdie as well as Fine Properties. However, he alleged that Rajinder Prasad Jain— who had claimed Sameen Rushdie was dead— was a persona non grata with the company.
Darmora claimed that while Rajinder Prasad Jain had been a former director of Fine Properties, he had been removed from the board.
Darmora also claimed that the present directors of Fine Properties had contacted Sameen Rushdie after the application about her death surfaced.
It is worth noting that in addition to Fine Properties Pvt Ltd, various other parties have attempted to claim ownership of the same property as well.
In 2012, Aruna Jain, Rahul Jain, and Amit Jain approached the Supreme Court, asserting that Sameen Rushdie had sold 1,500 sq yds of the 5,373-sq-yard property to them while the case was pending.
They sought “impleadment” in the ongoing suit— which means that they wanted to be made party to it— and clarification that Sameen retained only 3,873 square yards of the property.
However, the Supreme Court rejected their applications, as the court was unaware of their purported acquisition before delivering its judgment on 3 December 2012.
The three Jains subsequently approached the Delhi high court in 2013, with a similar application for impleadment. However, the high court felt that their application was “misconceived and is gross abuse of process of law”, and rejected it.
‘The judge is on trial’
Even as the contest over ownership continues, Bhiku Jain’s family members have also been seeking to assert their status as tenants in the Flagstaff Road house.
In September 2016, they filed an application under Section 27 of the Delhi Rent Control Act 1958 in Delhi Tis Hazari court, asking that they should be allowed to deposit rent as rightful tenants.
Their application claims that the Rushdies “are not accepting the rent merely to harass” them and to “create a false ground for eviction” from the premises.
They, therefore, demanded to deposit the rent with the Rent Controller instead. Their application was allowed in October 2019.
This petition further claimed that Anis Rushdie’s will was a “forged and fabricated document”, and that the general power of attorney through which Fine Properties claims to have purchased the entire property in November 2010 was also a “bogus document”.
However, advocate Darmora denies these allegations. “Who are they to claim that the will is forged and fabricated?” he asked.
“The will is in Sameen’s favour, is a registered document, and the other LRs (legal representatives) have given their NOCs in favour of Sameen. Empowered by this will, she executed the power of attorney and the property was sold to Fine Properties,” he claimed.
“All these documents have been filed in the high court,” he further said. “Fine Properties has been in touch with the Rushdies, but they are not the owners of the property in dispute now.”
Fine Properties, notably, had demanded to be included as a party in this rent petition as well, telling the court that Anis Ahmed Rushdie’s legal heirs had nothing to do with the property anymore, and that the company owned it now.
The Tis Hazari court rejected this application in February last year, but Fine Properties has challenged this before the Rent Control Tribunal, Tis Hazari court.
Meanwhile, Naren Bhiku Ram Jain told ThePrint that he has tried contacting the Rushdies multiple times, over WhatsApp and Facebook, but without any success.
He describes himself as a businessman, realtor, public speaker, motivator, and “most of all, a thorough gentleman” who follows the “principles of Jainism, namely “live and let live”.
Speaking to ThePrint, he shared nostalgic recollections about spending his youth in the house. He also spoke of “magnificent gatherings” here, including one in 2005, when former Prime Minister Dr Manmohan Singh apparently released Naren’s book Bhiku Ram Jain: A Living Legend on the life of his father.
“Now I’m 69, and I’ve spent almost 50 years and crores of rupees on this frivolous litigationbeing done by interlopers on this property. One generation is gone, the second is on the verge of going,” he added.
His brother, Arvind Jain currently resides in the bungalow, with his wife, son, and daughter-in-law.
Naren Jain claimed that he is working on a book on the litigation around the property. He has even thought of a title for the book — Do Gaz Zameen, which translates roughly to “a bit of land”— and said that he has already written half of it.
He added he’d get it published only once the trial concludes.
“Both litigating parties in the trial know the truth of the deal… but it is the judge who is on trial,” he said. “If this litigation case does not end during my lifetime, this book will be released after I die.”
(Edited by Asavari Singh)
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