Dina Wadia, Mohammad Ali Jinnah's only child, dies at 98

Mumbai: Dina Wadia, the daughter of Pakistan founder Mohammad Ali Jinnah, passed away at her home in New York on Thursday, a spokesperson of Wadia group said. She was 98.

Dina Wadia is survived by her son and Wadia group chairman Nusli N Wadia, daughter Diana N Wadia, and grandsons Ness and Jeh Wadia, the spokesperson said in a statement.

Born on August 15, 1919, Dina was the only child of Jinnah and his wife Rattanbai Petit.

After the partition of India and Pakistan, Jinnah moved to Pakistan. However, Dina married a Parsi businessman in Mumbai and stayed in India. She visited Pakistan for the funeral of Jinnah in 1948.

Dina last visited Pakistan in 2004 during a landmark cricket series between Pakistan and India on the invitation of former president General (retd.) Pervez Musharraf. She considered cricket diplomacy to be an enthralling dimension.

Dina's paternal grandparents were from Gujarat, who moved to Karachi for business in the mid 1870s, where her father, Jinnah, was born.

Her mother was a member of two of the elite class families of Bombay, the Petit-Tata family. Through her marriage to industrialist Neville Wadia, she belongs to the prominent Wadia family.

In 2007, Dina Wadia filed a writ petition before the Mumbai High Court, claiming that Jinnah House could not be classified as "evacuee property", as her father had died without leaving behind a will and demanded that the house be handed over to her.