Art centre hits roadblock amid property dispute

Tribune News Service

Dehradun, June 26

The much-awaited Gogia Pasha Centre of Arts that was to come up in the memory of Gogia Pasha, one of the greatest magicians of his time, has hit a roadblock. The local artiste’s property in Dehradun, which has been proposed to be converted into a heritage place, is mired in a controversy.

In a complaint lodged with the Dalanwala police, Usha Khanna, one of daughters of the late world famed magician, has alleged that some miscreants have been conspiring to grab her ancestral property situated at 5/2 Raipur Road, Dehradun.

Significantly, Dr Harbans Kaur Gogia, wife of late magician Gogia Pasha, had died on June 1, 1996, leaving a will bequeathing 1/5th share each to her five children in the undivided and joint property. She had also clearly stipulated that none of the children would have the right to transfer his or her share in the property by sale or gift to any third person without the consent of her other sons and daughters.

“My parents left this property for their children. It is the home where we grew up,” says Usha Khanna, the Delhi-based daughter of Gogia Pasha. “My brother Subash Chander Gogia has been incharge and maintaining the property for the past 20 years till we decided to convert it into Gogia Pasha Centre of Arts. But in the meantime, some property developers tried to manipulate us by forging my mentally-retarded brother Vinay Gogia’s signatures and pressuring us into a fake sale,” she said.

“Those property developers have illegally obtained the signatures of Vinay Gogia, who is mentally-retarded, and tried to claim the ownership of Gogia Pasha’s famous property,” she alleged.

Khanna said she had been working with the authorities concerned to get the property declared a national asset by recognising his contribution to the arts and entertainment sector in the form of Gogia Pasha Centre of Arts. “We cannot allow our disabled brother to be used as a pawn in this fraud masterminded by some miscreants,” she said. She had met senior police officials for justice but to no avail, she added.