Mumbai, March 27: In a fresh twist to the ownership dispute over Jinnah House, a central government office has found a copy of the will made by Pakistan’s founder Muhammad Ali Jinnah which mentions that the leader bequeathed the property to sister Fatima Jinnah. The development may hamper the Wadia family’s claim to the posh property located on Mount Pleasant Road at the upmarket Malabar Hill.
The will was legally certified as genuine by the Bombay high court and executed in Fatima’s favour in 1962. A copy of the probate (legal certification) was found in the records of the custodian of enemy property for India. “We have sent the copy to the ministry of external affairs for their perusal and action,” said Dinesh Singh, the custodian, who has his office in Mumbai.
If the probate is accepted by the court, government sources say it may weaken the claim of Dina Wadia — Jinnah’s daughter — to the bungalow. A British citizen and the mother of well-known industrialist Nusli Wadia, the 90-year-old Dina had moved the Bombay high court claiming rights to the bungalow on the ground that her father had not left behind any will.
Challenging the Centre’s move to take over the property — it wants to convert it into a cultural centre — she had claimed that the government was relying on the wrong premise, that the property was willed to Fatima who was declared an evacuee when she left for Pakistan in 1947.
The Centre has been maintaining that the will of Jinnah was a public document and Dina’s ignorance about it was a “brazen denial
–Agencies