Mumbai: In what could spell serious troubles for actor Sonu Sood, the BMC on Tuesday told the Bombay High Court that the Bollywood star has been a "habitual offender of illegal construction." The civic body, while citing past two instances of demolishing parts of the structure in question, has urged the HC to dismiss his plea.
This comes on an affidavit filed a day after a bench of Justice Prithviraj Chavan granted interim protection to the actor's Juhu-based residential complex from getting demolished.
The bench is seized with Sonu's plea challenging the demolition notice issued to him by the city civic body, which has alleged that the actor has illegally converted his residential complex into a hotel.
The BMC highlighted the fact that it has twice earlier in 2018 and in February 2020 already demolished parts of the six-storey Shakti Sagar building. The civic body has accordingly tried to make out a case that the actor being a habitual offender must not be protected by the HC.
In its affidavit, the civic body has said, "The applicant (Sonu) is a habitual offender and wants to enjoy the commercial proceeds of the unauthorised work and therefore once again started reconstructing the demolished portion in order to make it operational as a hotel albeit illegally and without permission from the License department."
The civic body has claimed that Sood was trying to protect an "ex-facie illegal" commercial hotel which has been constructed and modified by him as against the sanctioned plan.
"He has not been given permission for change of user of the said property from residential to commercial and there is no license to run the commercial hotel," the affidavit stated, while trashing Sonu's contentions that he has been harassed by the covic body.
The affidavit further said that Sonu has totally modified an entire building unauthorisedly into a hotel and is running the same without a license.
The matter is likely to be heard on Wednesday.
