DELHI (Web Desk) – A prime property in Delhi, worth millions of dollars, has long been regarded as jinxed – a place where careers – and sometimes, even people – have met a premature end, reported BBC.
Its a Colonial era mansion spread over 5,500 sq m with two storeys, three bedrooms, drawing and dining spaces, conference rooms, a room for the guard and 10 quarters for servants and staff. Lawns, so big that they could “host a football match” and a fountain in the back gardens.
The city’s first chief minister Chaudhary Brahma Prakash made it his home in 1952. In the 1990s, it was home to another Delhi chief minister Madan Lal Khurana.
But both lost their jobs prematurely, and the house began to be considered inauspicious.
In 2003, Deep Chand Bandhu, a minister in the Delhi government, who didn’t believe in superstitions, moved into the house. But soon after, he fell ill. He contracted meningitis and died in hospital.
The tragedy strengthened the belief that the house was cursed in some way and it remained vacant for the next 10 years, with ministers and bureaucrats declining to stay there.
In 2013, senior bureaucrat Shakti Sinha decided to stay there and he too did not complete his term in office.
On 9 June, it became the new office of the Delhi Dialogue Commission, set up by Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal to provide policy direction to the government.
Ashish Khetan, the commission’s vice-chairperson, rubbishes reports that the house is haunted and says that he, in fact, sought the place out.
“In this day and age, when we talk of a digital India and we are sending satellites in space, I thought this jinx needed to be broken,” said Khetan.
It was only in the last few decades that people began to describe it as a “bhoot bangla” (the bungalow where ghosts live).
