Family says goodbye to century-old house after court dismisses final appeal

 Maljindar Singh Sidhu Brar and his family were evicted after the Court of Appeal ruled they had no rights to the property.

The 106-year-old bungalow in Rawang was built in 1920 by Berjuntai Tin Dredging Bhd, which held a mining lease for the area at the time. (File pic)

PETALING JAYA:

It is the end of the road for Maljindar Singh Sidhu Brar, who spent over two decades trying to save his century-old house in Rawang from demolition.

On Aug 18, the Court of Appeal dismissed his final bid to save the 106-year-old house that his family had called home for the past 65 years.

Maljindar, also known as Jimmy, said the appellate court ruled that he had no rights to the property.

He has since vacated the Sino-Malay-Palladian house, although he does not know when it will be demolished.

“It was very disheartening for my daughters and my mother,” he told FMT.

To rub salt in the wound, Jimmy was given six days to vacate, which meant he could not even salvage any part of the house.

Given the opportunity, he said he would “take each plank, each piece of wood”, adding that this was the saddest part of the entire episode.

“I am okay with losing the land, but losing the rooms and the pillars that have housed your family for more than half a century is very disheartening,” Jimmy said, adding that he spent close to a million ringgit on legal fees.

It was previously reported that the bungalow was built in 1920 by Berjuntai Tin Dredging Bhd, which held a mining lease for the area at the time.

In 1959, the company sold the house to its employee Pologa Nathan, who later sold it to Maljindar’s grandmother, Gurtha Kaur.

According to earlier news reports, the family first applied in 1967 to the Kuala Kubu Bharu land office, later renamed the Gombak land office, to acquire the land on which the house stood but received no reply.

Jimmy said Gurtha transferred her interest in the house to the family in 1989 by way of a deed of assignment. However, he said the mining lease for the land had already been granted to two cement manufacturers by then.

The family applied seven times to acquire the land, but was told each time that the area had already been taken up under a mining lease and to reapply when the lease expired.

The family also took the matter to court.

In his last correspondence with the Selangor land and mines registry, Jimmy, who runs a transport business, learnt that the lease was set to expire at the end of 2025.

However, at the beginning of 2025, his family learnt that the lease had been renewed for another 20 years, until the end of 2045. - FMT