Saif Ali Khan loses Rs 15,000 Crore Bhopal ancestral Property as HC declares it ‘enemy property’

Saif Ali Khan attacker gets bail

In a major legal setback for Saif Ali Khan, the Madhya Pradesh High Court has dismissed his long-standing plea challenging the government’s decision to classify his ancestral properties, valued at Rs 15,000 crore, as "enemy property."

A trial court decision from 2000 that acknowledged Saif, his mother Sharmila Tagore, and sisters Soha and Saba Ali Khan as legitimate heirs to the estate was overturned by the verdict. Other descendants of Nawab Hamidullah Khan appealed the earlier ruling that had given inheritance rights to Saif's great-grandmother, Sajida Sultan, the daughter of the Nawab's senior wife, to the court. The appellants contended that the distribution ought to conform to Muslim Personal Law instead.

The High Court has therefore directed the trial court to resume proceedings and finish the case within a year, which could change the Bhopal royal family's inheritance structure and rekindle one of the most well-known property disputes in India.

The Pataudi family's assets in Bhopal were designated as enemy property under the Enemy Property Act in a 2014 notification from the Custodian of Enemy Property, which is what started the controversy. The Act, which was enacted in 1958 and broadened after the India-Pakistan war in 1965, gives the Indian government the authority to seize property from people who left India and moved to China or Pakistan.

The Act was applied in this instance because Saif's great-grandmother Abida Sultan, the sister of Sajida Sultan and the daughter of Nawab Hamidullah Khan, renounced her Indian citizenship and relocated to Pakistan following Partition.

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In 2015, Saif Ali Khan appealed the government's classification of the estate and won a High Court temporary stay. But on December 13, 2024, the court rejected his petition, lifting the stay in a landmark decision. Saif and his family were given 30 days to petition the appellate tribunal to regain their rights, but since no appeal was submitted by the deadline, the properties are now legally available for government purchase. The takeover procedure might soon be started by the Bhopal district administration.

This development has once again placed the spotlight on the Pataudi family’s contested legacy and the far-reaching implications of the Enemy Property Act, which continues to affect heirs of prominent pre-Partition families.