The Supreme Court on Monday dismissed a woman’s plea to reclaim the Red Fort, in which she claimed to be the widow of Bahadur Shah Zafar II’s great-grandson. The top court termed the claim misconceived and meritless.
“The writ petition filed initially was misconceived and meritless. It cannot be entertained,” CJI Sanjeev Khanna said. The CJI further said that if the arguments were considered, it would raise the question of why only the Red Fort, and not forts in Agra, Fatehpuri Sikri, and other locations.
In her petition, Sultana Begum claimed that her family was wrongfully deprived of the Red Fort after the British forcibly took possession of it following the first war of independence in 1857. She said that the then-emperor Bahadur Shah Zafar II—her ancestor and the last Mughal ruler—was exiled and the fort was seized unlawfully.
Arguing that she had inherited the property as his widow’s descendant, she alleged that the government of India was an illegal occupant. The petition sought the return of the Red Fort or adequate compensation, including damages from 1857 to the present day, for the alleged unlawful occupation. Begum says she could not file the appeal owing to her bad health and passing away of her daughter.
The Delhi High Court in December had junked the woman’s plea, prompting her to go to the top court. “You have come 164 years too late,” a bench of acting chief justice Vibhu Bakhru and justice Tushar Rao Gedela had remarked. She had also filed a similar plea in 2021, which was dismissed too.