Minute by minute

Eight emails were exchanged over two days by Bombay Parsi Punchayet (BPP) chairman Dinshaw Mehta and trustees Khojeste Mistree, Yazdi Desai and Muncherji Cama over who has the right to draft the BPP minutes. Mehta has been at loggerheads with Mistree and Desai ever since the 2011 trusteeship elections that saw Cama defeat Desai’s wife Anahita.

Email dated December 22, 2014, 11.49 a.m. from Desai to co-trustees
I am hereby releasing the draft minutes of the board meeting.
If there are any changes to be made, the same can be taken up on Tuesday, January 6, 2015.

Email dated December 22, 2014, 01.22 p.m. from Cama
Why have you arrogated to yourself the duties of the chairman?

Email dated December 22, 2014, 3.59 p.m. from Mehta to co-trustees, BPP executive Cawas Panthaki and staff member Zenobia Boyce
As Cama has rightly pointed out it is the chairman’s privilege and prerogative to draft the minutes and then circulate (them) to other board members for their input and corrections as may be required. Hence Yazdi’s peremptory circulation is non-est and void ab-initio. I was in Dubai last week and the minutes will shortly be forwarded to all for approval.

Email dated December 22, 2014, 6 p.m. from Desai
Cama and Mehta will be well advised to carefully read the election scheme about whose privilege and prerogative it is to draft and circulate the minutes. The minutes drafted by the chairman of our meetings lack basic integrity and are a figment of his imagination devised solely to glorify himself and ridicule all other trustees who are opposed to his manipulations. The corrections suggested by the other trustees are never accepted by Mehta who surreptitiously passes minutes when one or more opposing trustees are absent. So we have long decided that the minutes will now be written by Panthaki and circulated to all the trustees for their review and correction. These will be the official minutes.
In the meeting of 16-12-2014, the papers on which Panthaki wrote part of the minutes were forcibly grabbed from him by Mehta and illegally taken away from the BPP office, so that is why I had to write the minutes and circulate them. These are the official minutes.
The big, big words used — "non-est and void ab-initio” — have no relevance and it does not even matter whether Mehta is in Dubai or Timbuktu. His version of the minutes will always be rejected by the majority of the board until he learns to record truthfully and impartially what transpires at the BPP meetings.

Email dated December 22, 2014, 10.54 p.m. from Mistree to co-trustees and Panthaki
I have been following the emails with regard to the BPP board minutes. Could you please let us all know where in the court sanctioned election scheme it is stated that the chairman has the authority to write the minutes in the first instance, more so when it has been pointed out that the chairman distorts the facts and fabricates minutes to (suit) his convenience.

Email dated December 23, 2014, 3.12 p.m. from Mehta to Mistree
The first asinine query of Khojeste deserves no clarification. As regards his allegation that I distort or fabricate facts in the minutes, I vehemently deny the same. I record in the minutes the exact facts, perhaps in great detail, (of what) happens during the board meeting without fabricating or distorting any statement. In fact when a statement of Kali Shroff (KS) made in the boardroom but prior to the meeting was objected to by Yazdi the same was readily deleted. Perhaps my recording of uncomfortable but true facts is what is making them uneasy and they want to record only what they want. That is why Yazdi wanted deletion of actual facts recorded in the minutes of 16-9-14 about the cash found in the cupboard... Point out one item in the minutes where false or fabricated facts have been recorded and the same will be corrected forthwith but not where uncomfortable but true facts are recorded. Under the circumstances the alleged moralistic stance taken is not only hypocritical but downright false and illegal.
As regards Yazdi’s allegation that I snatched papers from Cawas Panthaki please note that this is another lie. Only when and after Cawas excused himself from recording any minutes on the issue of appointment of a new lawyer in (the) PLIH (Parsi Lying-In Hospital) matter, I took over the papers from Cawas to record the minutes myself and at the end of the meeting informed that I would prepare the minutes later.

Email dated December 23, 2015, 5.15 p.m. from Desai to co-trustees and Panthaki
And why did Dinshaw Mehta in the same minutes of 16-9-2014 change the minutes to confuse the cash of Rs 20 lakhs [from the Dady House transaction which Mehta had (allegedly) planted in Mehli’s cupboard after Mehli’s death to implicate a dead man] with the cash of Rs 1.2 lakhs odd which clearly belonged to the HPY (Holiday Programme for Youth)? Especially when Panthaki had correctly recorded the facts. Is this not manipulation? And the case of KS is a classic example of Mehta’s fabrication of the minutes and all this crap about the "same being readily deleted” is only a cover up for having been caught red handed for manipulating the minutes.
The incident of grabbing Panthaki’s papers is a fact and I even cautioned Mehta not to get physical with our staff.

Email dated December 23, 2015, 6.01 p.m. from Mehta to co-trustees and Panthaki
What I recorded was the total cash found that day. You can try to manipulate and lie as much as you please. Everyone is well aware that the money found in Mehli’s cupboard had nothing to do with the Dady House transaction and this is all another feeble attempt to twist the facts to suit your egotistic needs. Mehli was an honest man and his untimely death was (allegedly) caused by your arrogance and ego.