Asfanyar Bhandara victim of baseless propaganda, says aunt Bapsi Sidhwa

The aunt of the Chief Executive of Murree Brewery, Mr Asfanyar Bhandara and famous English novelist, Bapsi Sidhwa, has said in a press release, after her failure to reconcile the issues in the Bhandara family, that Asfanyar Bhandara is in the right, while his mother Goshi Bhandara, prey to the conspiracies of Rustam Sidhwa, his wife and the ex-servant, gardener Naseem Gul Khattak, is trying to disintegrate the Bhandara family. If they are true to their words, they should come before the people, who wish to resolve these issues within the family.

It should be noted that the sister of late MP Bhandara and 75 years old Bapsi Sidhwa is a famous English novelist. She has received many awards in recognition of her abilities and literary services, including: Bunting Fellowship at Radcliff/Harvard (1986), Visiting scholar at the Rockefeller Foundation Centre, Bellagio, Italy, (1991), Sitara-e-Imtiaz (1991, Pakistan’s highest Honour in the arts) Lila Wallace-Reader’s Digest Writer’s Award (1994), Premio Mondello for Foreign authors for water (2007), Inducted in the Zoroastrian Hall of Fame (2000).

She said that many of elders of the family including her brother Feroz Bhandara have tried to convince them to resolve the issues by dialogue and understanding, however, Rustam Sidhwa, always using deception and trickery, has made such efforts futile.

She said that a campaign of fictitious and baseless propaganda is being run in the Parsi community with the support of Rustam Sidhwa to convince everyone that Asfanyar Bhandara is trying to use his influential position to open the cases against Rustam Sidhwa. While the fact is that the cases of fraud and deception against Rustam Sidhwa were already in the courts before the election of Asfanyar Bhandara as a member of National Assembly and we have proof of these cases, while he is also a runaway in some of these cases. These cases are NOT established by or from Asfanyar Bhandara, instead, are filed by the people who have suffered losses and harm from Rustam Sidhwa.

She said that if Goshi Bhandara and Rustam Sidhwa are victims, and Asfanyar Bhandara is mistreating them, they should come forward and present the facts before the elders of the family. But she has always acted contrary to these facts and does not even see the people, who come to see her or propose reconciliation/resolutions, instead whenever family members tried to resolve the matters and tried to see her, Rustam Sidhwa always sends her out of the city and does not allow it to happen.

She further added that such issues are defaming and bringing disrespect to the Bhandara family, which is intolerable. Through an email she invited Goshi Bhandara to resolve the issues through dialogue and discussion and asserted that all people in the family wanted to play their role to reach a resolution.