EFFORTS to settle a court row which has torn apart the Pataks' £80 million Indian food dynasty were to continue this weekend.

The case, which pits spice-pickle moghul Kirit Pathak, aged 53, against his sisters, Chitralekha Mehta, aged 58, and Anila Shastri, aged 54, over who controls the family business, was due to resume at London's High Court yesterday.

But the hearing was adjourned while a mediator attempted to broker a compromise.

If there is still no peace deal, the court battle is expected to resume on Monday.

The case was adjourned in October, 2004, after a five-week hearing, when hopes of a settlement between the warring sides unravelled amid intense acrimony.

At the time, the trial judge, Mr Justice Evans-Lombe, opened the way for a resumption of the case, but said it would be a "horror of horrors" if the parties could not resolve their differences before then.

That prospect still looms large unless a compromise can be struck over the weekend.

The case could run for another six to seven weeks.

Mr Pathak, who lives in Markland Hill, Bolton, will have to return to the witness box for cross-examination while the judge must also scrutinise detailed handwriting evidence.

Kirit Pathak, whose Leigh-based company has achieved a multi-million-pound turnover and dominance of the Indian restaurant market, disputes his sisters' claims that their share in the family company wrongly ended up in his hands in 1989.

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

But Kirit has said that his sisters' claims are "completely at odds with the Hindu culture and practices of the Pathak family", and that everyone in the family understood that the business would pass to the sons.

Much of the legal feud has centred on the October, 1989, transfer to Kirit by his mother of 2,500 shares, which gave him effective control over the fast-rising company.

Kirit and his wife, Meena, are among Britain's richest and best-known business people of Asian ancestry, with their pictures hanging in the National Portrait Gallery.