Supreme Court to hear Rahejas’ plea against Wadia on January 20

NEW DELHI: The Supreme Court will hear on January 20 a plea by GL Raheja-owned Ferani Hotels to allow it to produce a document that was not part of its original pleadings. The document will be placed before the court to support its court battle to remove Bombay Dyeing chairman Nusli Newille Wadia as administrator of a 260-acre real estate patch in Mumbai’s suburban Malad.
Ferani Hotels Private Limited was assigned the task of developing the Eduljee Framzone Dinshaw estate by Wadia in 1995 in return for payment of 12% of the gross sale proceeds to the latter. But the two sides fell apart in 2008 with Wadia terminating the deal and alleging fraud, and the Rahejas going to court to have him removed as administrator, revoking a November 2003 order that allowed Wadia to continue as administrator of the estate.

However, so far Rahejas have not been able to convince the court to accept in support of their claims a 1994 document, which they claim to have stumbled upon only in 2010. Both the lower court and the High Court have ruled against them. They have now approached the top court.

The Bombay High Court had in July 20, 2012, permitted the Rahejas to continue developing the stretch of land estimated at over Rs 22,000 crore.

The Rahejas claimed that Wadia had wrongfully continued as administrator of the estate, bequeathed to charity after the death of the sister of EF Dinshaw, a US-based Parsi, who had willed it all to two named charities, and later converted it into a gift for his sons. Dinshaw had died in March 1971, but in a will made a year before assigned life interest to his sister Bachoobai in the estate on the condition that it would go to two US charities after her death. In 1972, Bachoobai appointed Wadia as the administrator of her estate.

Ferani Hotels claims that this should have come to an end in 2003 when Bachoobai died. The Rahejas are represented by lawyer Abhishek Manu Singhvi while Fali S Nariman represents Wadia. A top court bench, comprising Justices SJ Mukhopadhaya and NV Ramana, after hearing short arguments from Singhvi, posted the Ferani Hotels appeal for further hearing on January 20. Singhvi has argued that the court should allow Ferani Hotels to produce the document, which does not figure in its initial pleadings, to prove that Wadia wrongfully continued as administrator by suppressing the fact that he was an agent.