“Hoping to mislead”

"Since the respondents therein had fraudulently produced stolen material and submitted the same as original primary evidence, hoping to mislead this ho­no­rable court through false representation, the respondents must be held guilty of violations of judicial processes. Strictures need be passed against the perpetrators, they be punished as thought fit and they be disallowed from any further agitation in this and collateral matters.” So alleges a review petition (RP) filed in the Bombay High Court (BHC) this August 9 by community activist Jamshed Salamat Irani against the Bombay Parsi Punchayet (BPP).

Herbad Mikhail Chistyakov (left) and Meher Master-Moos

The RP prepared by advocate Bapoo Malcolm is in reference to the alleged assault on lawyer and religious activist Meher Master-Moos and the Russian Zoroastrian Mikhail Chistyakov in Sanjan on February 19, 2010 by a group of around 45 people reportedly led by BPP chairman Dinshaw Mehta. A day earlier a few Surat residents including former Surat Parsi Panchayat chief accountant, Sorab Katpitia, Noshir Dordi and Rohinton Patrawalla allegedly visited the premises of the Zoroastrian College where Chistyakov was undergoing an initiation into the Zoroastrian priesthood.

According to the petition, photographs and other material were "stolen during the first of two attempts …and to conceal the theft, the respondents orchestrated a mob attack on the next day…to ostensibly prove that they themselves took the photographs.”

These photographs were allegedly submitted by the BPP trustees in their reply to an originating summons (OS) filed in the BHC by Jamsheed Kanga, a former municipal commissioner of Bombay and erstwhile trustee of the BPP and Homi Khusrokhan, former managing director of Glaxo and a Tata director, on behalf of two so-called "renegade” priests, Ervads Khushroo Madon and Framroze Mirza. Their summons followed a ban by the BPP on the two ervads from performing religious ceremonies at Doonger­wadi and two agiaries controlled by the premier trust.

The BPP alleged the duo was performing irreligious ceremonies such as the funerary ceremonies for those opting for means of disposal other than dakhmenashini. The BPP lost the case before a division bench of the BHC and filed a special leave petition in the Supreme Court of India which recommended mediation. A year later the talks are still on.

The BPP reportedly wanted to discredit Madon before the BHC by showing to the court the photographs of him initiating a non-Parsi into the Zoroastrian priesthood. Chistyakov wanted to undergo the initiation as a priest so he could tend to the spiritual needs of his co-religionists in St Petersburg. According to the BPP, only a Parsi born in an athornan family can undergo the navar ceremony.

"The attack on the College referred to above was to falsify the case against one Ervad Khushroo Madon, a practising Zoroastrian priest of Bombay and a pillar of the forward-looking section of the Parsi community. His expulsion was the bone of contention of the appeal before this honorable court. His salutary efforts are aimed at the integration of Zoroastrians worldwide… having come into the sunlight after decades of oppressive communist rule,” the RP states. "The respondents were averse to this enlargement of the faith as they are convinced and afraid that their monopoly would stand diluted. Hence their need to malign Ervad Madon, using cooked-up evidence.”According to the RP, the trustees had alleged in their written statement (WS) before the BHC, "As soon as the said persons were sighted by Mr Khushroo Madon, he and the other mobeds fled from the scene.” The WS "pretends to indicate that the mob, led by respondents No. 2 (Mehta) herein, took photographs of Ervad Madon and another priest in the process of conducting some religious ceremonies and also alleging that Ervad Madon and the other priest escaped by running away. In fact Ervad Madon was in Bangalore from the February 18 to 19, 2010, the two days of thefts and dacoity at Talasari. A copy of his airline tickets is annexed…

"The other priest too had left Talasari for Gujarat on the morning of February 18, 2010. The photographs, purported to be original and collected evidence, were in fact stolen from the book of prayers of the Russian Herbad (Zoroastrian Russian priest) on the day before, the 18th. The photographs were taken during the first nahn (purification) ceremony on February 9, 2010 by the College president Meher Master-Moos and developed and printed before February 16...

"The negatives of the photographs and the bill are in her possession. Other photographs on the same film roll are also in the possession of Meher Master-Moos as is the film itself. They will be produced as and when demanded by this honorable court... Moreover, from the shadows in the photographs it is obvious that they were taken in the very early morning. Evidence given in the subsequent paragraphs will bear all this out.

"The respondents in the OS/appeal before this honorable court did not present themselves with clean hands. Their hands are the black hands of thieves. They orchestrated an assault with about 50 culprits, including women, on the locked premises of a non-party, and then physically assaulted the College president, a 67-year-old and an advocate.

"They also assaulted a peaceful Russian national… Chistya­kov, and stripped him naked to ‘prove’ he was a ‘Pakistani spy,’ all this after having earlier stolen his precious translation of the holy Zoroastrian text, the Zend Avesta, from the Avestan to Cyrillic, which was his lifelong labor of love… All this just to add grist to their false defence.

"(a) Theft, (b) dacoity, (c) perjury, (d) fraud on this honorable court, (e) assault on a female senior citizen and on an innocent foreign worshipper and student priest, (f) criminal conspiracy to fabricate evidence to attempt to play a fraud on a court of law, (g) breaking into locked private property … the list of criminal activities is endless. And all this with a premeditated motive to concoct evidence, to perpetrate a fraud in a judicial process on this honorable court. Then again bravado, continuing bravado, is the hallmark of the perpetrators, especially respondents Nos 2 and 6 (Mehta and BPP trustee Jimmy Mistry). A press report, a boast in the perpetrators’ own publication (The BPP Review), a recent bombast by respondent No 6 (BPP trustee Jimmy Mistry) in a public meeting (Federation of Parsi Zoroastrian Anju­mans of India meeting), reported in Parsiana of March 21, 2012” followed.

The RP requests amongst other things that the court if "on finding the respondents numbers one to eight (BPP, Mehta, Arnavaz Mistry, Khojeste Mistree, Armaity Tirandaz, Jimmy Mistry, Yazdi Desai and Noshir Dadrawalla) guilty of perpetrating a fraud on it” then to "set aside (the BPP) defense” in the OS and "pass strictures” against (the trustees) and restrict them from proceeding with any further judicial action, in this or any other collateral matter, including the SLP (special leave petition) they have filed in the Supreme Court, and the subsequent mediation efforts.”