HYDERABAD: The descendants of the Nizam of Hyderabad returned to the High Court in London on Wednesday to challenge the court order related to over 35 million pounds lying in a UK bank account.
Last year, in a judgment handed down by the Royal Courts of Justice in London, Justice Marcus Smith had ruled in favour of India and the titular eighth Nizam of Hyderabad and his brother, who had reached a confidential agreement in a decades-old legal dispute with Pakistan over funds belonging to the seventh Nizam of Hyderabad at the time of Partition in 1947.
However, Najaf Ali Khan on behalf of 116 heirs of the late seventh Nizam, sought to challenge that ruling this week by accusing the administrator of the seventh Nizam’s estate of ‘breach of trust’.
Appearing remotely from India, Najaf Ali Khan told the court that the funds were released improperly to India and Prince Mukarram Jah and his younger brother Muffakham Jah while also claiming "chronic financial hardship".
“I determined the beneficial ownership of that money in my judgment in 2019. It is impossible to accept that he can be entitled to reopen the proceedings,” said Judge Smith, dismissing Najaf Ali Khan’s attempt to reopen the case.
The judge will, however, continue to hear arguments over Wednesday and Thursday over allegations of impropriety by the administrator of the late seventh Nizam’s estate.
The administrator apparently holds around 400,000 pounds from the money left over following payments made to the state of India and the two princes based on their confidential agreement over the total funds.
The dispute revolved around 1,007,940 pounds and nine shillings transferred in 1948 from the then Nizam of Hyderabad to the high commissioner in Britain of the newly-formed state of Pakistan. That amount had since grown in a London bank account into 35 million pounds as the Nizam's descendants, supported by India, claimed it belonged to them and Pakistan counter-claimed that it was rightfully theirs.
“Pakistan’s contentions of non-justiciability by reason of the foreign act of state doctrine and non-enforceability on grounds of illegality both fail,” the High Court verdict had concluded, dismissing Pakistan's claim.