MUMBAI: As reported earlier, Ravi Chopra, son of Late B R Chopra and nephew of Late Yash Chopra, had put four of his family owned properties on sale in order to clear debts amounting to Rs 32 crore.
The Chopra’s owed money to 27 creditors of B R Films and B R Television. The family has paid off this money after physically delivering demand drafts worth Rs 37.97 crore to the creditors. In the process, they have managed to save the iconic Juhu bungalow from being auctioned.
The Juhu bungalow – B R House opposite Sea Princess Hotel, holds multiple memories of the family. One of Bollywood’s biggest producers, B R Chopra, used to conduct most of his businesses in that house and also took his last breath there.
After the first extension granted to the family ended on April 18, the advocate representing Ravi Chopra, presented scanned copies of Demand Drafts (DDs) on a tablet PC in the court. This convinced Justice S J Kathawalla to extend the family’s deadline to April 20. However, the extension of almost two days did not help much as they just had a few hours to complete the work, as April 19 was Ram Navami, a bank holiday.
The Chopras worked at break-neck speed, prepared all the pending DDs by 8.30 pm on the same day, and rushed to hand deliver them to the creditors with some help from Yes Bank. They achieved this by mortgaging an outhouse to the bank. The last DD was handed over around at 11.30 pm, just minutes before the deadline was to expire.
On the day of the hearing, April 20, the entire Chopra family excluding Ravi who is unwell, were present in the court.
B R Films had produced memorable hits like as ‘Naya Daur’ (1957), ‘Sadhna’ (1958), ‘Humraz’ (1967) and ‘Baghban’ (2003) also the epic TV series ‘Mahabharat’.
