BMC used ‘school’ premises to store rat tails

A company that owned premises at Fort’s Cama House since 1981 has got its space back last week after, quite literally, smelling a rat.

Sixty-seven years after the premises at Fort’s Cama House were first given on rent to the state government, the Bombay high court ordered that the premises be returned to Intercorp, the company that owns it now, as the government, without the owners consent, sub-leased the 450 sq feet premises to the BMC that stored pesticides and tails of dead rats in the premises.

As per the court record, prior to Intercorp, the premises were owned by Bai Hirabai Dadiba Saher Trust that leased the premises to the then government of Bombay in 1943 to run a ration shop for selling food grain.

The shop continued to function on the premises till 1985. According to Intercorp, if the government stopped using the premises for the purpose that it was requisitioned, it should have been handed over to the owner.

Intercorp contended that the government, instead, gave it to the BMC to run a school on the same premises. But, BMC’s malaria department was actually using it to store pesticides, chemicals and tails of dead rats.

Although the state made no representation before the court in the case, in the correspondences with Intercorp, the government said the owners should take BMC to court for occupying the premises.
The BMC, on the other hand, said only the state could ask them to leave as they were tenants of the state and not Intercorp. Terming it ‘trespass’, Justice Roshan Dalvi ordered BMC to hand over the premises to Intercorp in four weeks.