Not many people would have heard of Haji Banda Hassan, or either of his two sons, smalltime entrepreneurs and ordinary residents of a non-descript two-room property somewhere in Central Delhi. Even fewer may have heard of Rajiv Goel, longtime trading entrepreneur and former vice president of New Delhi’s Khan Market Traders Association. A lot more people, at least in Delhi, would have heard much about Khan Chacha, the small hole-in-the-wall eatery in Khan Market that has been dishing out succulent kebabs to a generation of Delhiites. Now, this small eatery — closed down for the time being — is at the centre of a fierce dispute, now in the Delhi high court, between Messrs Hassan and Goel. And it isn’t simply a landlord-tenant property dispute as is being reported in city newspapers.

It is a dispute about intellectual property — in this case the Khan Chacha trademark, whether it rightfully belongs to Haji Banda Hassan aka Khan Chacha or whether it belongs to Rajiv Goel. The high court, in an interim order till the next hearing later this month, has prevented Goel from operating his just opened branch in Delhi’s Satya Niketan under the Khan Chacha name, following a complaint from Haji Banda Hassan.

Like in all such disputes, there are two sides to the Khan Chacha story. The first version comes from the Hassans. The Hassans have been in the kebab business in Khan Market since the early ’70s, assiduously building up a reputation and goodwill among their steadily growing and increasingly loyal clientele. Their eatery has, of course, changed location over the years, most recently in 2006 when it moved into the now disputed property owned by Goel. The Hassans claim that they were tenants at the property and paid a monthly rent, and ran an independent business under the Khan Chacha brand name.

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