The Bombay High Court on Monday closed all arguments and reserved its verdict on a petition filed by actor Kangana Ranaut against the demolition of a part of her bungalow in Mumbai by the city civic body.
A bench of Justices S J Kathawalla and R I Chagla conducted hearings on the plea last week before closing it for orders on Monday.
Ranaut approached the high court on September 9 after the demolition of a part of her bungalow in Pali Hill area of Mumbai by the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC).
She sought that the demolition be declared illegal and the court directs BMC to pay her Rs 2 crore as damages.
Ranaut, through her counsel Dr. Birendra Saraf, had alleged that the BMC carried out the demolition out of malice following a comment she made against the Mumbai Police that irked the Shiv Sena-led government in Maharashtra.
She also cited an alleged threat given to her by Shiv Sena’s chief spokesperson Sanjay Raut in an interview.
The BMC’s counsels, Anil Sakhre, Joel Carlos, and Aspi Chinoy, had, however, denied the actor’s allegations.
They said the BMC had simply been performing its statutory duty in demolishing such portions of the bungalow that Ranaut had altered illegally.
In an affidavit filed through Carlos, the civic body alleged that despite making illegal structural changes, Ranaut had approached court for relief.
During the previous hearings, the bench questioned the BMC’s swiftness in demolishing Ranaut’s property.
It also stayed the demolition through an interim order and noted that had the BMC shown similar swiftness in all cases of illegal construction, Mumbai would have been a very different city.
“Don’t you have any grace?” the HC asked after viewing a clip of the interview where Raut asked “what is law”, responding to a question on if he would take legal action against Ranaut for having compared Mumbai to PoK in a tweet.
Young and extraordinary individuals don’t just wake up one fine day and kill themselves. Sushant said he was being bullied and outcast, he feared for his life, he said movie mafia banned him and harassed him, he was mentally affected by being falsely accused of rape #AIIMS
— Kangana Ranaut (@KanganaTeam) October 3, 2020