THE bitter legal battle that tore apart the family behind the multi-million pound "Pataks" Indian food empire has ended in a provisional £12 million deal.

The peace pact was agreed in the High Court between company boss Kirit Pathak, who lives in Bolton, and his two married sisters. The sisters, Chitralekha Mehta, aged 56, and Anila Shastri, aged 52, claimed they had been cheated out of shares allocated to them by their late father.

They said today that they would receive a total of around £6 million each under the settlement.

Mrs Mehta said: "We are both very happy. We have won and the truth has prevailed.

"This was not about the money. We have fought this case to get back what we thought was rightfully ours - that is, the shares in the company."

But the deal will not be completed until the details have been translated into Gujerati so that the family's 77-year-old matriarch, Shantagaury Pathak, can agree to it.

Mrs Pathak was co-defendant with her son in an action brought by the sisters, who said they were victims of a Hindu culture in which business assets always went to the sons of a family.

The legal costs of the case, which ran for more than six weeks, are expected to reach £1 million. The sisters had legal aid.

The sisters claimed that the 1,250 shares registered in each of their names in 1974 were still rightfully theirs and had been unlawfully transferred in a rationalisation of the company's finances in 1989.

But Kirit, aged 51, and his mother accused them of greed, gold-digging and opportunism in their attempt to get their hands on shares in the Patak business, which has a factory in Leigh and which has grown spectacularly over the years. It now has an annual turnover of more than £54 million.

During the hearing in London, Kirit, of Victoria Road, Heaton, Bolton, told Mr Justice Evans-Lombe that his sisters' action was "completely at odds with the Hindu culture and practices of the Pathak family" under which everyone understood that the business would pass to the sons.

That culture, he said, avoided the "possible interference of in-laws" and complemented the Hindu custom of sons looking after their parents in old age and daughters leaving to live with their husbands' families.

The shares were only registered in his sisters' names as "an arrangement of convenience". The sisters knew the stock would eventually go back, and they knowingly signed transfer forms to that effect, he said.

The sisters said they were persuaded by their father, Laxmishanker - who founded the business in the 1950s after emigrating from Kenya - to hand over their shares and they were given to Kirit without their knowledge or consent.

During emotional exchanges, Kirit told Mr Justice Evans-Lombe how a "complete bloodbath" struck his family in the late 1980s.

The dispute set sibling against sibling with the family's matriarch, Shantagaury, describing her daughters as "wicked".

Shantagaury had told the court: "This case is a wicked attempt by my two girls, who have only greed, jealousy and malice in their hearts, to get money that does not belong to them."

Kirit and his wife Meena are among Britain's richest and best-known business people of Asian ancestry. Both have been honoured by the Queen and their pictures hang in the National Portrait Gallery.

The feud tarnished a remarkable success story. Laxmishanker is said to have come to Britain in the 1950s with just £5 in his pocket.

He began selling homemade samosas and other snacks to London's Indian community, then opened a shop making chutneys and pickles.

Today the company's curries, sauces, pickles and breads are distributed in more than 40 countries, including India. Meena Pathak appears on television regularly and has written two Indian cookbooks.