Controversy over auction to unidentified buyer.
By The American Bazaar Staff
NEW DELHI: The Mumbai bungalow that formerly was occupied by legendary Indian scientist Homi Jehangir Bhabha was sold at auction on Wednesday for a whopping Rs. 372 crore, around $62 million.
The iconic home, which was named Mehrangir by Bhabha during his life, was sold to a man who has chosen to be unidentified in the media. As the home of the man who is considered the father of India’s atomic energy program, many believe that the house should belong to the Indian government, and that it should be preserved as a national landmark or a museum, rather than as a private residence.
This has caused somewhat of a row, with some people going so far as to lodge formal complaints against the buyer of the home in an effort to keep it as public property that can be used for educational purposes and preserved for posterity.
Two Mumbai residents – a worker with the Atomic Energy Workers & Staff Union and an employee of the Department of Atomic Energy’s National Forum for Aided Institutions Employees – have filed a Public Interest Litigation (PIL) in Mumbai’s High Court in order to block the sale of Mehrangir, reports the Mumbai Mirror.
The property is currently possessed by the National Center for Performing Arts (NCPA), which inherited the house in 2007. Bhabha tragically died in 1966, and his house passed onto his brother Jamshed at that time. When Jamshed passed away seven years ago, the house fell into the hands of the NCPA, which has now auctioned it off.
The bungalow sits on a plot of roughly 1,600 square meters close to the Hanging Gardens, and the house itself is over 15,000 square feet in size, with three levels, and has got a spectacular view of the Arabian Sea. It is considered one of the most beautiful homes in Mumbai.
Bhabha was a nuclear physicist who was a founding member of the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research (TIFR) and the Trombay Atomic Energy Establishment, the latter of which has now been named in his honor. Originally from New Delhi, he studied at two of Mumbai’s most prestigious institutions – Elphinstone College and the Royal Institute of Science – before spending some time in the UK and studying at Cambridge University.
He was awarded the Adams Prize in 1942, the Padma Bhushan in 1954, and was a Fellow of the Royal Society of London for Improving Natural Knowledge. He died at the age of 56, when the Air India flight he was on crashed in the Alps.