Lucknow, Aug 5 (IANS) Prominent Shia scholar and cleric Maulana Kalbe Jawaad Thursday sprung a surprise by coming out in support of the erstwhile royal of Mahmoodabad who was suddenly deprived of his properties that he had retrieved after fighting a 32-year-long court battle.
If it was the Supreme Court that had entitled Ameer Mohammad Khan of Mahmoodabad, about 80 km from here, to get back his family estates worth billions in different cities of Uttar Pradesh and Uttarakhand, it was an ordinance promulgated last week by President Pratibha Patil that brought him back to square one.
The local administration in Lucknow, Sitapur and Nainital resumed possession of the different properties on behalf of the Custodian of Enemy Property at amazing speed, leaving Khan at his wit’s end.
While Khan was incommunicado, Kalbe Jawaad chose to speak up for him.
Questioning the ordinance that sought amendment in the Enemy Property Act, he told a press conference: ‘I fail to understand what prompted the Congress-led union government to promulgate such an ordinance which bars even a court of law to alter the status of a property as enemy property.’
He said: ‘If the Supreme Court of India had entitled the Raja of Mahmoodabad to his family properties taken over by the government after his father migrated to Pakistan, simply because he had chosen to stay back in India, how could his properties be labelled as enemy properties?’
‘I see this as a conspiracy of the Congress party against Muslims.’
Jawaad has urged the union government to withdraw the ordinance and restore the properties to the ex-royal.
