Getting the family into a pickle

When Pathak fled Kenya in 1955 with a precious little capital of £5 he could have hardly imagined his children fighting for his legacy in Britain’s top courts. It was a bitter family dispute that often degenerated into a typical Indian family brawl with the most imaginative abuses. At last, the so-called ‘‘Pickle war’’ was settled with an out-of-court provisional £8 million settlement. The sisters, Chitralekha Mehta, 56, and Anila Shastri, 52, who accused their brother, Kirit Pathak, of cheating them of shares allocated by their late father, will be receiving £8 million, £6 million in shares and £2 million in compensation.

After the settlement, Chitralekha Mehta said: ‘‘We are both very happy. We have won and truth has prevailed. This was not about the money. We have fought this case to get back what we thought was rightfully ours.’’

The sisters might be happy and the legal dispute might be over but the comments of Kirit Pathak left ample hint that the bitterness was bound to stay. ‘‘The decision to settle the claims is a result of my concern for the health of my mother and my elder brother, both of whom have suffered ill-health during the trial,’’ he said. He said the mounting legal costs, aggregating to more than a million pounds, were having an impact on the company and its 600 employees.

Meanwhile the siblings’ mother, Shantagauri, 77, as expected, backed her son, claiming that the daughters were making a ‘‘wicked attempt’’ to seize her son’s fortune, for which he had worked so hard. She said the sisters’ move would send her to her grave ‘‘broken-hearted’’.

Laxmishankar Pathak started his pickle business in a little shack in Kentish Town, north London and steadily built it up to grow as one of the most famous Asian brands in curry-crazy Britain. His pickles not only tickled the British palate, in a clever business move he dropped the tongue-twisting ‘‘h’’ to make ‘‘Patak’s’’ easily pronounceable for his increasing number of English customers.

But still it remained a small family business. In 1974, Pathak Sr. divided the business among his heirs, issuing shares to his four sons and two daughters. Fifteen years later, the two daughters transferred their shares to their mother, Shantagauri. When Pathak Sr. died in 1997, the day-to-day running of the business was passed on to Kirit and his PR-savvy wife Meena, who used his culinary skills to diversify the business, thus becoming the public face of the Patak’s. Meanwhile, Kirit had also bought out his brothers.

Soon Patak’s became the leader in Britain’s Indian food market and the principle supplier of spices to Britain’s 60,000 Indian restaurants. Estimates vary about the worth of Patak’s pickle empire. It could be anywhere between £55-75 million. Two years ago, as Kirit and Meena piled up their wealth, the two sisters, supported by their US-based brother Yogesh, demanded their shares back.

The dispute ended up in courts. Kirit accused the sisters of ‘‘ill motivated gold-digging’’. Whereas Yogesh, on behalf of the sisters, told the High Court in London that Kirit never gave them a clue of their business. He said: ‘‘Kirit made Machiavelli look like Mother Teresa’’. In the witness box, Chitralekha was scathing about her brother: ‘‘He never lets his right hand know what his left is doing — I never thought a brother was capable of such a thing.’’ While Kirit admitted before the judge that there had been ‘‘a virtual bloodbath’’ in the family.

The two sisters claimed that they were dominated by their very strict and traditional parents. They argued that they were the victims of old Hindu culture in which the family inheritance is inevitably passed on to the son, thus depriving daughters of their legitimate rights. The sisters argued that it was under the strong parental pressure that their shares were taken away.

But the mother denied the story and accused the elder sister Chitralekha of being ‘‘quite hot tempered and very argumentative, showing little respect towards her elders.’’

As the public warfare among the Pathaks continued, the judge, Justice Evans-Lombe, was presented with a grave dilemma of deciding the authenticity of a vital piece of evidence. It was a note scribbled on a flyer for a manufacturer of pumps used in Patak’s factories to produce pickles. The note showed that Shantagauri Pathak had promised that the shares would be handed back to the sisters at a later stage. Kirit insisted that the note was a forgery.

However, with last week’s settlement, Justice Evans-Lombe must have felt relieved as he was spared of making a ruling on what really seemed a flimsy piece of evidence. Yet the Pathaks’ soap opera continues to be debated among Britain’s Asian community with the core issue still unresolved — do daughters have a right to share the family fortune?