The legendary Bollywood actor’s Peshwar home will not get a heritage building status yet, as there are legal hassles over ownership the government’s plan to turn the ancestral home of Bollywood actor Dilip Kumar in Pakistan’s Peshawar city into a heritage site has come a cropper.
Because there are too many claimants to the property. The culture department was keen to preserve the ancestral home of the legendary actor and convert it into a heritage site, reported Dawn Tuesday.
The house is located in Mohalla Khudadad near Qissa Khwani Bazaar. A dingy building, it located at the end of a narrow street. The authorities have been planning since February this year to buy the house where Kumar was born on December 11, 1922 as Yusuf Khan.
He, who later took on the name Dilip Kumar, stayed in the house till the age of 12 before moving to Mumbai with his family. The plan was also to bring the actor’s personal belongings to the house from India to put it on display for visitors. A library of his films was also in the works. But the plan hit a roadblock as government failed to buy the house as there were many claimants to the property.
“Now there are legal complications and till the time the rightful owner is not known, the directorate would not go ahead with the plan,” Culture Director Pervez Khan was quoted as saying. The building is now being used as a warehouse.
The media report said that chances of getting old houses of Bollywood stars Shahrukh Khan and Raj Kapoor, also located in Peshawar, have gone down. “The extended family of Shahrukh Khan is living in his ancestral house whereas a local family owning Kapoor’s house is not ready to sell it to the government,” Pervez Khan said.