Battle of the Bhathenas
"We have registered a non-cognizable offence against Zoru Bhathena for voluntarily causing hurt,” said a police official at Santa Cruz police station, stated MM. "According to the police Darayus Bhathena, who claims to live at Mehrabad, Juhu-Koliwada, alleged that his son pushed and assaulted him during a dispute over the bungalow,” stated the news report.
"In his counter complaint, Zoru claimed that it was his father who was trying to claim the bungalow for himself. He said relations between his parents have been strained for the past 20 years,” according to MM. "He barged into the bungalow, where my bedridden mother lives, to get possession of it. I never assaulted him, I just asked him to leave. All the injuries on his body are self-inflicted. He contacted the police several times and they told him clearly that he should move court if he wants the Juhu property,” Zoru told MM.
Top: Story of squabble over Juhu property (above)
Darayus, a "rally racing legend” and member of the Federation of Motor Sports Clubs of India, is the chairman and managing director of NAT Steel Equipment Private Limited in Dadar (East), notes MM. The firm specializes in hospital equipment, especially sterilizers. Darayus claims he "owns a building in Mahim and this bungalow in which my wife Katie is a partner.”
Zoru is best known for being an environmental activist and had also opposed The B. D. Petit Parsee General Hospital’s tie up with the Gurgaon-based Medanta Group for which Pervin and Jal Shroff of Hong Kong had pledged to donate USD 22.5 million (Rs 160 crores). Due to such opposition, the project fell through.
When a wry remark was made over widely circulated emails regarding Zoru being "a defender of Parsi property,” Zoru retorted, in an email dated December 5, "Yes! The perks of protecting your 80-year-old mother from your 81-year-old… father...When do parents grow up? And, this is my mum’s house at Juhu, where I was born and brought up. Perhaps the reason I fight to protect nature and this too. The fight(s) to conserve places like this are the ones always worth fighting for.” Tehemton Adenwalla, a traditionalist, came to Zoru’s defence claiming him to be "an asset to the Parsi community and to the citizens of Bombay. Every family has internal feuds and Zoru has clarified his stance on the issue. He had earlier raised questions on the Parsee General Hospital’s deal with Medanta. This had made some people uncomfortable.”
All that citizens of Bombay "need to do is to remove their blinkers and act on the pain they see around them and the city would be such a wonderful place,” Zoru told writer Malavika Sangghvi. Writing in "Malavika’s Mumbaistan” in the Hindustan Times of December 6, Sangghvi noted that she was in "a meandering” text communication with Zoru for his role in reuniting two runaway brothers, aged 10 and 13 years, with their family a few days earlier. The activist had spotted the children on Juhu Beach at 2 a.m. while "babysitting” Katie who lives there. "Young kids running away from home is always so much stress... for the family and for the kids too,” Zoru had posted on social media. The activist’s tweet to the city police was responded to in 15 minutes. "I felt bad calling the cops... (the boys) felt I was squealing on them... It also occurred to me that maybe I am being gypped,” he told Sangghvi. "You can’t stop trusting people just because some others are rogues,” he said.