A fierce bat­tle is rag­ing for con­trol of a lo­cal fried chick­en em­pire. A con­trac­tor has come for­ward claim­ing he and his moth­er had de­vel­oped the se­cret orig­i­nal recipe for the pop­u­lar Japs Fried Chick­en. How­ev­er, busi­ness­man Nicholas "Japs" Thomas, 63, is re­fut­ing claims that Bhag­wa­tee Maraj and her son, Dar­ryl Ma­habir, man­ag­ing di­rec­tor of Japs Fried Chick­en and Thomas' step­son of four years, were the recipe's in­ven­tors. "Dar­ryl was on­ly ten years old at the time," Thomas said. "How could he come up with the recipe for Japs Fried Chick­en? His on­ly con­tri­bu­tion was a gar­lic sauce as a side."

Thomas said he and his moth­er, Irene, de­vel­oped the recipe when they opened a fast food out­let, Jap's Fast Food in San­gre Grande in 1979. Thanks to the won­der­ful taste and se­cret recipe of Jap's Fast Food, the busi­ness grew rapid­ly, and be­came known as Japs Fried Chick­en. When asked to com­ment on Thomas' claim, Dar­ryl Ma­habir replied: "As far as I know, my moth­er had the orig­i­nal recipe and I re­plen­ished and im­proved on it to what our cus­tomers know and love as the ten­der and tasty Japs Fried Chick­en taste to­day."

In 1980 Thomas rent­ed his aunt Dol­ly Pri­eto's prop­er­ty, at the cor­ner of Fos­ter and Brier­ly Streets, San­gre Grande, which even­tu­al­ly be­came his. He then ren­o­vat­ed the prop­er­ty and re­lo­cat­ed Japs Fried Chick­en there. This is the present lo­ca­tion and head of­fice of Japs Fried Chick­en, now op­er­at­ed by Ma­habir and his moth­er. Thomas said he be­friend­ed Maraj around 1985, when she was an in­sur­ance agent with British Amer­i­can and pa­tro­n­ised his busi­ness. Maraj left her in­sur­ance job and worked with Thomas in his busi­ness around 1987. She be­came known as "Madame Japs" be­cause of her re­la­tion­ship with Japs.

"She nev­er cre­at­ed any recipe for Japs Fried Chick­en," Thomas said em­phat­i­cal­ly.

"She didn't know any­thing about the restau­rant busi­ness. I taught her every­thing she knows." Dur­ing their brief re­la­tion­ship, Maraj bore two chil­dren for Thomas, Alvin and Kevin. When their re­la­tion­ship end­ed around 1989, Thomas left Maraj in the busi­ness, with the stip­u­la­tion that when their sons turned 18, the busi­ness and build­ing would be turned over to them. "She hasn't done this up to now," Thomas re­vealed.

"My sons don't have any­thing. The busi­ness right­ful­ly be­longs to them."Dar­ryl Ma­habir now owns 100 per cent con­trol­ling in­ter­est in the com­pa­ny.

Thomas' at­tor­ney, Vit­ti Fur­longe-Kel­ly, has is­sued two pre-ac­tion pro­to­col let­ters to Ma­habir and Maraj to cease and de­sist from us­ing the name Japs Fried Chick­en and to va­cate the premis­es at Fos­ter Road, San­gre Grande, since the prop­er­ty be­longs to his client and his sons, Kevin and Alvin Thomas.