Not A Single Prayer Made By Mehta And Tirandaz Granted By The Court

The five year old litigation surrounding the Parsi Lying in Hospital has finally come to an end. On 22nd March 2017, the Supreme Court disposed off the Special Leave Petition filed by Dinshaw Mehta and Armaity Tirandaz in 2015 against the Order of the Bombay High Court, which had allowed the Krimson Development of the Parsi Lying in Hospital.

The Saga of the PLIH: The Parsi Lying-In Hospital (PLIH) is situated in one of the by-lanes in Fort, near Cathedral School. Old timers would know it as Tehmulji Suvavarkhana/hospital. Many of our old community members would have been born in this maternity hospital. Since more than 20 years it is lying unused, dilapidated and in a precarious state of disrepair. The PLIH property has many restrictions:

The property is a heritage property, (situated in heritage precinct) and the height is restricted to 24 meters as per the recent policy.

It is reserved for hospital under the Development Plan and can be used only as a hospital under the Lease Deed from the Collector (the use can be changed with the permission of the Collector).

The lease expired in 1992 for one plot and in 2002 for the other plot. No efforts were made for renewal of the lease till 2009.

The BPP Trustees are the ex-officio Trustees of PLIH and there is a separate governing body viz., the Managing Committee. The following eminent community members are part of the Managing Committee – Minoo Shroff (Chairman), Dinshaw Tamboly, Maneck Engineer, Noshir Dadrawala, Muncherji Cama (who resigned from the Committee once he became a BPP Trustee), Kersi Randeria, Dr. Rusi Soonawalla, Mehernosh Currawalla, Karl Tamboly and Yezdi Bhagwagar.

Since 2009, the Managing Committee wanted to re-operationalise the Hospital, and made serious efforts to contact leading hospital operators and health care companies to give their proposal for re-operationalising the hospital. Max health care, Escort group and the Parkway group of Singapore were contacted but no interest was evinced. Eminent gynecologist and winner of the Dhanwantri award Dr. Rusi Soonawala made inquiries with the Breach Candy Hospital; however Breach Candy Hospital was interested in converting the hospital into nurses’ quarters, which was not acceptable.

 

The Proposal And Process Applied by the Managing Committee: A group of doctors comprising of Dr. Arun Mullaji, knee replacement specialist, Dr. Anant Joshi, sports surgeon, and Dr. Prakash Khubchandani, a health care operator approached the Managing Committee with a proposal to develop PLIH into a Super Specialty Orthopedic Hospital through a Company called Krimson Health Venture Private Limited (Krimson). The Agreement was not of outright sale. An Agreement was executed for development of the PLIH by all the Committee members. This agreement was further subject to:

1. Charity Commissioner’s permission
2. Ratification by BPP
3. Collector’s permission

The committee applied to the Charity Commissioner and obtained his permission, as he found the transaction in the best interests of the Trust. Subsequently the committee approached the BPP to ratify the Krimson agreement. The BPP Trustees expressed their reservation about ratifying the agreement and conveyed to the Committee that they wished to explore if better offers could be obtained. The committee in the meantime kept the Krimson agreement in abeyance till 9^th April, 2012. Pursuant to the above a draft public notice inviting offers for outright sale of the property was sent by the BPP vide letter dated 4^th April 2012 to the Managing Committee for its approval. The said draft public notice was not approved by the committee on the basis that there was no question of outright sale and that the property ought to remain within the community.

Thereafter the BPP Trustees made independent additional efforts to procure offers on the lines of Krimson, however no concrete offer was received by the BPP. Frustrated by the inordinate delay, the Managing Committee, on the advice of Darius Khambatta, filed an Originating Summons against the BPP and a Writ Petition was filed against the Managing Committee in the Bombay High Court.

During the unprejudiced meetings, it became apparent that the then BPP Chairman, Dinshaw Mehta wanted to sell the property on an outright basis, which is ultra vires the Trust Deed. During such meetings the Managing Committee got the impression that the BPP Trustees other than the Chairman seemed to be in favour of the Krimson proposal, but with some improved terms. It further appeared that the other BPP Trustees and their Advocate was not aware of the rights of the Managing Committee and they had filed the writ petition without proper understanding of the situation. Hence terms of Krimson agreement were modified at the instance of the BPP Trustees and improved. The said improved terms were accepted by BPP on a vote of 5:1 with Munchi Cama abstaining and Dinshaw Mehta dissenting. Armaity Tirandaz initially signed the Agreement and then later changed her mind and withdrew her signature.

The Win-Win Offer: By this Agreement, the Trust would receive approximately Rs.5 crores per annum from Krimson plus Rs.5 crores worth of free treatment to the members of the Parsi community.  Also an area of minimum 2500 sq ft would be given in this building to BPP. Further the unearned income on the lease rent of Rs.5 crores i.e. another Rs.5 crores would be paid by Krimson.

So-called Offer of Breach Candy Hospital: Even after this Dinshaw Mehta approached Breach Candy Hospital and Dr. Turel to give their offer for re-operationalising the hospital. Dr. Turel’s proposal was a nonstarter and never proceeded further. Breach Candy could not match the offer of Krimson. Even the consent terms were kept pending for Dinshaw Mehta to get a better offer from Breach Candy, but he failed.

During the High Court proceedings, Mehta represented before the Court that he had better offers in hand for the hospital property. The High Court granted time to Dinshaw Mehta to place these “better offers” before the Court.  However, as recorded in the Order dated 30^th April 2015, passed by the Bombay High Court, Dinshaw Mehta and Armaity Tirandaz could not produce any concrete offers and their Petition was rejected by the Bombay High Court.

Mehta files SLP in the Supreme Court: Being aggrieved by the Bombay High Court Order, Dinshaw Mehta and Armaity Tirandaz approached the Supreme Court in 2015 on various grounds. During the proceedings before the Supreme Court, an ad-interim order was passed on 13^th October, 2015 directing the parties to maintain status quo as existing on the date of the said Order. According to the Managing Committee, the said interim order was obtained by Mehta and Tirandaz by resorting to falsehood and deception i.e.

1. by suppressing the fact that the Bombay High Court had given sufficient opportunity to Mehta and Tirandaz to place better concrete offers and had passed the order dated 30^th April, 2015 only after they had failed to do so and
2. by suppressing that the Managing Committee had given the Petitioners sufficient opportunity to issue a public notice to procure better offer for the hospital property.

What has been the biggest blow is that last year Krimsom withdrew its proposal due to being tired of waiting endlessly for the outcome of the litigation. The community lost the golden opportunity of having a super specialty orthopedic hospital of international standing, a project which would have been of great benefit to our aging community.

Finally, the Supreme Court vide its judgment dated 22^nd March, 2017 disposed off the SLP, inter alia observing that “We have noticed from the record that the trustees who belong to Parsi community enjoy high status in the society and are persons of eminence in their respective fields. There should, therefore, be no reason as to why any trustee should try to cause any harm to the interest of the Trust(s) or for that matter should act prejudicially and against the interest of the Trust.”

The Court has also observed: “There may be difference of views when issues relating to the affairs of the Trust are debated amongst the Trustees but what should be the uppermost behind everyone’s viewpoint is “interest of the Trust and the beneficiaries” while projecting everyone’s viewpoint. That would be, in our opinion, his real selfless service to the Trust and its beneficiaries. It will bring good for the Trust and its beneficiaries.”

Conclusion:

It is unfortunate that the community has lost out on such a good opportunity to re-operationalize the hospital, earn good revenue and enjoy free medical treatment. Mehta and Tirandaz have sabotaged the project only on account of their ‘dog in the manger’ attitude!

The community should collectively demand that Dinshaw Mehta and Armaity Tirandaz immediately place before the community that elusive ‘better offer’ or make good the loss that the hospital and the community has suffered in terms of time, energy and revenue.

The order of the Supreme Court is a slap on the face for Mehta and Tirandaz with not a single prayer granted by the court. However, being poor losers, they will attempt to interpret the order by twisting and turning it and write their version in a paid ‘advertorial’ in a certain regional newspaper and then buy bulk copies for free distribution in Parsi Baugs.

The real test is to read the SLP filed by Dinshaw Mehta and Armaity Tirandaz, the falsehoods stated therein and the prayers made and then read the Judgment.

The Managing Committee of the Hospital stands vindicated. However, the community is the real loser.

 

Will this community that has been shortchanged by the Mehta-Tirandaz duo now sit quietly or demand compensation or force them to get an offer that is better than what the community had but lost thanks to the ego and cussedness of these two frustrated individuals? The community is left with is a dilapidated building which is lying idle and unused for 20 years and in all probability will remain like this for another 20 years …all thanks to Dinshaw Mehta and Armaity Tirandaz.

 

On being contacted, one of the members of the Managing Committee, (on the condition of anonymity) stated that “Dinshaw’s contention that the Krimson offer was a sellout has fallen flat. The community should now rise up and demand that Dinshaw and Armaity bring offers better than Krimson’s to re-operationalise the hospital, which both of them claimed that they had in their hands. It is a huge loss for the community and Mehta and Tirandaz should be called upon to compensate for the same. Accountability is the sine qua non-of holding public office.”