BUSINESS

Patak's family feud 'is settled'

Source:PTI
April 21, 2004 19:33 IST

The bitter legal battle between Kirit Pathak, owner of the multi-million pound Patak's Indian food empire, and his two sisters is being settled out of court, the London high court was told on Wednesday.

A provisional agreement, thought to be worth pound 12 million, has been reached, the court was informed.

The case hinged on claims by two of the Pathak sisters that they had been cheated out of their shares.       

Sisters Chitralekha Mehta, 56, and Anila Shastri, 52, are expected to receive about pound six million each.

A spicy story UK pickle family fight

The settlement follows a protracted high court case between company boss Kirit and his two married sisters Chitralekha and Anila who claimed they had been cheated out of shares allocated to them by their late father.

The sisters said they had given their shares to their mother for safekeeping only, but she had passed them on to their brother Kirit.

Kirit later bought out shares of his brothers and parents to take control of the award-winning Indian food company based in Lancashire.

"We are both very happy. We have won and the truth has prevailed. This was not about the money. We have fought this case to get back what we thought was rightfully ours -- that is, the shares in the company," Chitralekha said.

The settlement will give some satisfaction to the youngest Pathak son, Yogesh, who had urged Kirit in a letter two years ago to "swallow his pride and do the right thing" by settling out of court in a "genuine desire to salvage family unity".

Wednesday's deal will not be completed until the details have been translated into Gujarati so that the family's 77-year-old matriarch, Shantagaury Pathak, can agree to it.

Shantagaury was co-defendant with her son in the action brought by the sisters. The daughters argued they were victims of a Hindu culture in which business assets always went to the sons of a family.

The legal costs of the case, which ran for more than six weeks, are expected to reach pound one million.

Shantagaury and her husband Laxmishanker Pathak arrived in Britain from Kenya in 1955, accompanied by their four sons and two daughters with only five pounds.

They began by selling samosas from their tiny kitchen and eventually, under the control of Kirit, built up a business with a pound 54 million turnover, supplying 90 per cent of Britain's 7,500 Indian restaurants.

The Pathak family dropped the 'h' from the corporate title 'Patak's Foods'.
Source: PTI
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