Khyber Pakhtunkhwa government to buy the ancestral house of Dilip Kumar and Raj Kapoor in a bid to conserve the historical buildings.
The Department of Archaeology in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province has decided to allocate sufficient funds for purchasing the two buildings, which have been declared as the national heritage.
The legendary Bollywood actors Dilip Kumar and Raj Kapoor’s ancestral houses would be purchased by the provincial government which lie in the heart of Peshawar city and are in crumbled condition and facing demolition threat.
Dr. Abdus Samad Khan, the head of the department of archaeology said, Deputy Commissioner of Peshawar received an official letter to determine the cost of both historic buildings where two legends of Indian cinema were born and lived their childhood before the partition of the subcontinent.
Raj Kapoor’s ancestral home, known as Kapoor Haveli, is situated in the fabled Qissa Khwani Bazaar. It was built between 1918 and 1922 by the legendary actor’s grandfather Dewan Basheswarnath Kapoor. Raj Kapoor and his uncle Trilok Kapoor were born in the building. It has been declared national heritage by the provincial government.
Veteran actor Dilip Kumar’s over 100-year-old ancestral house in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa is also located in the same locality as Raj Kapoor’s. The house is in shambles and was declared as a national heritage in 2014 by the then Nawaz Sharif government.
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According to Khan, many attempts have been made to demolish these two buildings by their owner who wanted to construct commercial plazas in view of their prime location but such actions were stopped due to the fact that the archaeology department wanted to conserve them for their historical importance.
However, the owner of Kapoor Haveli, Ali Qadar, said that he never aimed to demolish the building and made many contacts with the archaeology department officials to protect and preserve this historic structure which is national pride.
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