India’s butter chicken battle heats up with new court evidence

NEW DELHI:

With new photographic and video evidence, an Indian court battle over the origin of world-famous butter chicken is about to get hotter.

Two Indian restaurant chains have been battling since January in the Delhi High Court, both claiming credit for inventing the dish in a trial that has caught the attention of social media users, food critics, editorials and TV channels around the world.

The popular restaurant chain Moti Mahal said it had the sole right to be credited as the inventor of the curry and asked its rival, the Daryaganj chain, to stop claiming credit and pay $240,000 in damages. Moti Mahal said founder Kundan Lal Gujral created the custard dish in the 1930s in a restaurant in Peshawar, now in Pakistan, before moving to Delhi.

This “story of the invention of butter chicken is not true” and is intended to mislead the court, Darjagani said in a new 642-page deposition reviewed by Reuters.

Daryaganj says a late member of his founding family, Kundan Lal Jaggi, created the controversial dish when he helmed the kitchen at the relocated restaurant in Delhi, where Gujral, his friend-partner from Peshawar handled only marketing.

Both men are dead, Gujral in 1997 and Jaggi in 2018.

Evidence in the non-public filing includes a black-and-white photograph from the 1930s showing the two friends in Peshawar. 1949 partnership agreement; Jaggi’s business card after he relocated to Delhi and the 2017 video that talks about the origin of the dish.

Thanks to the friends’ collaboration, “both parties can claim that their respective ancestors created the dishes,” Daryaganj says in the filing, calling the dispute a “professional rivalry.”

Moti Mahal declined to comment. The judge will hear the case on May 29.

A key point of contention, which the court will have to decide, is where, when and by whom the dish was first prepared – by Gujral in Peshawar, Jaggi in New Delhi, or whether both should be credited.

Butter chicken is ranked 43rd on TasteAtlas’ list of the world’s “best dishes,” and bragging about who invented it may matter, brand experts said.

“Being an inventor has a huge advantage globally and in terms of consumer appeal. You also have the right to charge more,” said Dilip Cherian, image guru and co-founder of Indian PR firm Perfect Relations.

Moti Mahal operates a franchisee model with more than 100 stores worldwide. Butter chicken dishes start at $8 in New Delhi and cost $23 in New York.

The late US President Richard Nixon and India’s first Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru are among the famous customers who have visited his flagship store in Delhi.

Daryaganj started in 2019 and butter chicken costs $7.50. It has 10 stores, mainly in New Delhi, with plans to expand to other Indian cities and Bangkok.

In the 2,752-page Indian lawsuit, Moti Mahal had also accused Darjagani of copying “the look and feel” of its store interiors.

Daryaganj responded with photos of restaurant interiors which the judge will examine, claiming that it is Moti Mahal that has copied the “floor tile design”.