Karachi, May 15 :
Karachi, May 15:
What the Indian government could do for one section of the family of the Nawab of Bhopal, Pervez Musharraf's Pakistan could not for another.
Two days after Begum Abida Sultan of Bhopal died last Saturday, descendants of the family of the Nawab of Bhopal were thrown out of their ancestral home at Clifton here at the behest of the Pakistani Intelligence Bureau.
'I am deeply aggrieved and let down by the government of Pakistan for such treatment meted out to the family which sacrificed everything for the sake of Pakistan and to pursue the ideals of Quaid-i-Azam,' said Shaharyar M. Khan, the only son of the late Begum and a former foreign secretary of Pakistan.
Begum Abida Sultan was actually the only member of the Nawab's family to have gone over to Pakistan. Her middle sister, Sajida, the late mother of Mansur Ali Khan (better known as Tiger) Pataudi, chose to make India her home with her husband. The third and youngest sister, Rabia, also stayed back.
Their father, Nawab Hamidullah Khan of Bhopal, was ruler of the second most important Muslim princely state in India after Hyderabad. After Partition, Tiger's mother became heir to the Nawab of Bhopal's properties in India.
With integration of the princely state of Bhopal in the Indian Union, the government allotted a property in Delhi to Sajida in exchange for Pataudi House, which it had requisitioned. The Dupleix Road (now Kamaraj Marg) residence continues to be the home of Tiger and wife Sharmila after his mother's death.
No such luck for the descendants of her sister.
Shaharyar Khan said 'while I was preparing for the Qul (recitation of verses from the Koran) of my mother, a strong force of police arrived at Bhopal House and asked the inmates to leave'.
The house, in an upscale part of Karachi, was the property of Hamidullah Khan, who bought it in July 1947 when he was planning to come to Pakistan - he was supposed to become the defence minister - but never did. It was not until 1960, when he died, that some of his descendants left India for Pakistan and started living in Bhopal House.
In 1993, Begum Abida Sultan's name appeared in legal documents as the owner.
The IB had set up its office in the annexe. Shaharyar Khan showed documents to disprove the claims of the intelligence agency to the property and said there had been attempts in the past also to dislodge the family.
He said while his mother was in coma, she was served an eviction notice by the government under special powers assumed under an ordinance, despite an order from the high court to maintain status quo.
On Saturday, the public works department was informed that Begum Abida Sultan had died, following which the property was taken away from the family.
'My late mother had sacrificed everything for the sake of Pakistan and for the ideals of Quaid-i-Azam. It seems that we are being punished for our commitment.'
The former foreign secretary, who had argued Pakistan's case on Kashmir many a time and had been tipped as foreign minister to take over from Abdul Sattar, said his calls to interior minister Moinuddin Haider, President Pervez Musharraf's principal secretary Tariq Aziz, and the minister for works went unheeded. Khan said that in order to settle the title of the property, he had proposed to the IB to put the property under the control of the court and agreed to arbitration.
Neither his late mother nor he had planned to live in the house and had planned to either open a school there or hand it over to a philanthropic organisation.
He has moved Sindh High Court against the IB. When it came up for hearing today, the judge expressed his dismay. 'What was the hurry to do all this in such a manner a day before the sayyum (third day after death),' Justice Zahid Qurban Alvi said.