Mumbai court stays order evicting Rustom Ice Cream from Brabourne Stadium premises

A Mumbai court order that had directed K Rustom & Co, owner of the iconic Rustom’s Ice Cream parlour at Churchgate, to hand over possession of its shop premises at the Brabourne Stadium to the Cricket Club of India (CCI), has been stayed by an appellate court..Judges MS Pathan and JS Jagdale of small causes appellate court passed the order on a plea by K Rustom & Co. to stay the execution of an April 30 judgment of a small causes court wherein the company was directed to hand over the shop to CCI within two months..The CCI in its suit before the lower court had claimed that Rustom had been paying a monthly rent at the rate of ₹527 which was far below the standard rent.They claimed that Rustom was not using a substantial portion of the suit premises for the purposes for which the same was let out to them for the last 3-4 years.It was also submitted by CCI that it was in reasonable and bonafide requirement of the property, for club activities.judge SB Todkar had then passed the direction in favour of CCI..Rustom in its appeal contended that it had high hopes of success in the appeal against the April 30 judgement and that it was their statutory right to argue the issue before the court, so the operation and execution of the judgement and decree could be stayed on ad-interim basis.CCI objected to the application, claiming that a valid decree had already been issued in their favour. It informed the Court that the property was located in the Churchgate area, where rents are extremely high, and that if the Court is to stay the judgement and decree, it should award appropriate compensation.Advocate DC Mehta for K Rustom & Co., sought an adjournment of four weeks in order to produce evidence of leave and license instances in Churchgate area.On behalf of CCI, advocate Anand Gandhi stated that there were instances of leave and license in the area where the rent was between ₹6 lakh to ₹7 lakh a month. Mehta, however, claimed that the property would fetch a monthly rent of not more than ₹1 lakh.The Court suggested that until the valuer's report of the appellants came on record, they would draw a golden mean figure of compensation, to which both partied agreed."In view of this, we find that, as a stopgap arrangement, if the compensation of Rs. 2,50,000 per month is fixed on an ad interim basis, it would take care of justice," the Court directed.Therefore, it stayed the April 30 order subject to the condition that K Rustom deposit ₹2.5 lakh compensation before court along with the rent of ₹527 per month..[Read Order]