A move by the Pakistani authorities to acquire iconic Indian actor Dilip Kumar’s ancestral home in Peshawar has triggered a row involving several people who are claiming the property.
The government of Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa province recently said it would acquire the house in the Mohallah Khudadad area of the historic Qissa Khawni Bazar and preserve it as a national heritage site.
Ikramullah, who currently occupies the house, told a press conference in Peshawar Monday he alone owns the property, rejecting claims by several others.
He said Dilip Kumar’s father Ghulam Sarwar bought it in 1943, and then sold it to Yaqoob Qureshi in 1944. Qureshi died in 1981, and his son Muhammad Badshah sold the house in 2005. Ikramullah’s partner Haji Lal Muhammad then bought it for Rs. 5.5 million. Ikramullah said Badshah had delayed registering it in Haji Lal’s name.
He then went to court to get a certificate of ownership. Ikramullah said Dilip Kumar or his relatives had no rights to it as Sarwar sold it six decades ago.
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Krishna is going to Moscow for ‘trilateral’ meet
Age Correspondent
New Delhi, April 10
External affairs minister S.M. Krishna will attend a “trilateral” meeting of India, China and Russia in Moscow on Friday to review existing mechanisms of cooperation and also explore newer avenues.
This will be the seventh such meeting of the three foreign ministers.
Two earlier ones were held at Wuhan, China, in 2010 and Bengaluru in 2009