Owner of Rs 500 crore empire has 4 months to vacate his house

Parmanand Patel, the 79-year-old patriarch of the Patel family which built the towering Kanchunjunga building and Vama Stores on Peddar Road, has four months to move out of his Bella Vista bungalow and find alternative accommodation. 

The Patel family, which is now fighting a legal battle in the Bombay High Court over the control of the Rs 500-crore empire, has lived as tenants in the Peddar Road bungalow owned by the family firm Tulsidas V Patel Pvt Ltd since 1970.

But in January 2006, Patel’s status was reduced to that of a gratuitous licensee. The decision was taken in a board meeting allegedly at the behest of his elder daughter Sudha Chowgule. Patel, who suffers from an acute renal ailment and mental incapacity, was given 12 months to find alternative accommodation.

The licence could be revoked without notice at any time.

Battlelines were drawn between family members when Patel’s wife, Indu, filed a suit in the high court last September against elder daughter Sudha for allegedly forcing her mentally-ill father to gift her majority stake (85 per cent) in the family-owned Tulsidas firm.

The suit has challenged a will and gift deed executed on behalf of Patel on the ground that he was incapable of managing financial affairs because of his mental incapacity since 2002.

Sudha who is married to VHP president Ashok Chowgule, however, produced medical reports to support her claim that her father was in control of his mental faculty when given medication and argued that he had knowingly and willingly gifted her the majority control in the company.

The court had earlier granted an injunction on Sudha exercising control of the company and ordered that status quo be maintained. Sudha challenged the order and a two-judge bench personally interviewed Patel. On finding him to be “incoherent and confused”, they ordered an examination by a panel of six leading doctors, which held that Patel was deficient in cognitive functions, memory registration and recall. Sudha has challenged this report as “vitiated”.

To prove that Patel has lost control of his mental faculty, Indu’s lawyers have presented a gift deed signed by Patel, identical to the one favouring Sudha except that the beneficiary here is Indu. “He will sign any document placed before him without comprehending what he is signing away,” Indu’s counsel Iqbal Chagla argued.