Shanta Pathak

Pathak was born Shanta Gaury Pathak Pandit to Gujarati parents in Zanzibar, Tanganyika, on 2 February 1927. [1] In 1945, she married Laxmishanker Pathak, who in 1938 had emigrated from Gujarat in British India to Mombasa, Kenya, where his eldest brother had a small business making sweets and samosas for the city's burgeoning Indian population.[2]

With the onset of the Mau Mau Uprising, and increasing hostility under Idi Amin, the Pathaks set sail on a passenger ship from Uganda, stopping in Kenya and Marseilles, to England in 1956, reaching London with just £5.[2]

Patak's papadums, paste pot and Curry paste in 2018

Unhappy about her husband's job cleaning the drains for St Pancras Council, Pathak decided the family should start a similar business to that they had in Kenya, running a kitchen from their Queen's Crescent flat in Kentish Town.[3]

Progress was slow, and it was several years until they had enough money to buy a small shop close to Euston Station, followed by another in 1961, in Bayswater.[3]

In 1962, their neighbours complained about the noise and smell, and the Council gave them three months to find alternative premises.[2] They found a converted mill in Brackley, Northamptonshire, and left London.[2] Later, they relocated to Lancashire.[4]

Over time, the business grew to have an annual turnover of £55 million, and in 2007 was taken over by Associated British Foods for a sum estimated to be between £100- and £200 million.[3][5]

They had four sons and two daughters.[1] Her husband died in 1997, but the will he left was unclear, and there were long-running family disputes and various acrimonious court cases.[4]

Pathak died of heart failure on 23 November 2010, at the Royal Bolton Hospital, Farnworth, Bolton, and was survived by her six children.[1]