Dr NH Naro was a specialist in venereal diseases and sexual disorders and ran a successful dispensary in Bombay through the early 1940s. In 1946 in order to increase his business he hired an advertising agency called UN Publicity Services. It’s difficult to gauge the impact the campaign had on his business, but Naro was disappointed and refused to pay UN Publicity. Like many other breach of contracts, this dispute too went to civil court and Naro agreed via a settlement on 13 th June 1949 to repay the amount in monthly installments. Defaulting in these payments would lead to his dispensary, and all furniture and articles therein as well as the “goodwill” attached to the dispensary would be sold to recover these costs. Naro was also made to create a charge that he would not sell or mortgage this property till his debt was settled. A month after the settlement Naro decided to move his practice to Karachi and through his agent conveyed possession of his dispensary, its furniture and his tenancy rights to the owner of UN Publicity Services.

Ordinarily, this would be an unremarkable event among the landscape of commercial transactions in Bombay except that the city that Naro moved to was the capital of the new state of Pakistan, formed by partitioning the territories of British India. On moving to Pakistan with an intention of settling there, Naro was declared an “evacuee” by the Indian government, and his property including the dispensary and attached rights were taken over by the newly created office of the Custodian of Evacuee Property. UN Publicity Services was denied access to the dispensary and despite the court order and legal documentation was confronted with a bad debt arising out of unforeseen circumstances.