‘Trust’ deficit: Anxiety on eve of property e-auction

Maqsood Maniyar | NT

Mysuru: The looming e-auction of two properties belonging to Mysuru-based Rifat Ul Muslimeen Educational Trust (RMET) by Canara Bank on January 31 has caused consternation among the community members.

Concerned entrepreneurs have suggested everything from stripping the Secretary of the Trust Taj Mohammad Khan from his position apart from other trustees to crowdfunding to pay off the loans, while still others mooted the idea of putting the Trust in the hands of a wealthy philanthropist “who’d secure the future” of poor students studying in the institutes.

The properties were mortgaged to Canara Bank as security for a loan of Rs 8.95 crore in 2010-11. The account of the Trust turned into a non-performing asset (NPA) on March 31, 2012 due to non-payment of dues. Interest accrued has ensured that the pending dues have ballooned to Rs 44 crore now.

Furthermore, a notice was issued by the Canara Bank in Bengaluru on December 16, 2022 that charged the Secretary and other trustees of trespassing, forgery, cheating, criminal intimidation and requested action against them under the IPC in a petition to the station house officer (SHO) of the Metagalli Police Station.

The Trust that runs 14 schools and colleges had been founded by former Narasimharaja MLA and minister Azeez Sait in 1961 and now caters to around 4,000 students and employs about 400 teachers and nonteaching staff.

Taj Mohammad Khan took over as Secretary in 2001 and has been lauded for a stellar job. However, the loan he took from Canara Bank has put him in the eye of the storm and for running things in a top-down manner so much so that even other trustees did not know of the Trust’s dealings.

While the notices have been issued to all 11 original trustees, only five remain on the board. Some of the trustees have either died or resigned during the last 20 years. The notice mentions two properties, including the 32,000 square feet land in Udayagiri on which stands the Farooqia Women’s DEd College. The Trust had been sanctioned this land as a Civic Amenity (CA) site.

The second property is a four-acre plot of land in Belvatha village in Kasaba hobli, where one can find housing colonies numbering almost 70. Speaking exclusively to News Trail, the residents here claimed that they bought the land from a joint developer’s firm, one of the partners being Nabeel Ahmed Khan, son of Taj Mohammed Khan.

Canara Bank has accused Khan Senior of selling the plots fraudulently since the property had been mortgaged to the bank.

RMET old guard needs to go, say community members. Tauseef, a Bengaluru-based Mysuruorigin businessman, who is associated with Karnataka Muslim Social Educational Welfare Trust (KMSEWT), which is an advocacy group that hopes to save the RMET and its properties in the interest of the poorer sections of the community that depend on it for their schooling, said that the secretary Taj Mohammad Khan and the old guard had to be removed for there to be credible solutions to the problem.

“We want to punish and throw out the people who have mismanaged the trust and a new trust has to be formed. New trustees need to be in place,” he said.

“Not only Taj Mohammad Khan but his entire team which has been there for some four decades needs to go,” he added. How did the bank allow mortgaged land sale? Asks lawyer Mysuru-based advocate Mudassar Ali Khan said that he suspected Canara Bank officials had colluded with the trust secretary to sell mortgaged land to private parties.

“The only solution is for the trust to be superseded. What is odd is that all activities are only limited to the secretary. The rest of the trustees are name sake. They were not at all involved in the day to day activities of the trust,” he said. “Whatever wrong things that they have done should lead to them being booked under criminal acts. This is a scam. We have only seen one side of it. The other side is that bank officials are equally responsible,” he added.

Khan claimed that RMET had taken huge amounts of loans from Islamic Development Bank (IDB) and donations from NGOs. Political Science professor from Mysore University Muzaffar Azadi said that one possibility is that the trust could be handed over to a wealthy philanthropist, who could steady the ship.

“The concept of a private trust is untenable at this moment. That could have been done earlier. It was a civil society trust. Now, they have incurred too many losses,” he said, adding that the issue could have been settled much earlier.

“It can be handed over to a trust, a kind of Gandhian concept. Let them develop, sub-lease or whatever, but the money collected can be repaid to the bank concerned so that the prestige of the community can re