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| Valuation papers of Maharaja’s treasure goes ‘missing’ | | | EARLY TIMES REPORT
MONDAY, 31 OCTOBER 2011 13:15 SRINAGAR: An official document, lying with state government, which contains valuation details of Kashmir’s last autocratic ruler’s treasure, has gone “missing,” an RTI activist says.
The document copy is believed to contain the gross estimate of the valuables of Maharaja Hari Singh. The valuation conducted by a French auctioneer firm Sotheby’s Reyner in 1983, had then put the price of the valuables at 5000 crores. “Since then the value of the treasure has multiplied and now stands at 100000 crores,” Bashir Assad, the RTI activist, says.
Assad claims the erstwhile ruler had two treasures: “One comprising of valuables declared as state property and known to all, and second was the undisclosed treasure not known to anybody except Deewan Iqbal Nath and Brigadier Khuda Bakhsh,” he says.
The treasure is reported to be in the custody of the Srinagar administration till 1981 in six huge steel boxes under the direct control of the then treasurer Nath.
Assad sought the valuation copy of the “undisclosed treasure” through an RTI. Subsequently, he says the office of Chief Minister’s secretariat replied via phone. “We don’t have the copy of the document with us,” Assad, quotes the officials from the CM’s office saying.
He expresses doubts about the whereabouts of the undisclosed treasures. “Who knows whether the treasures are in safe hands or not,” he remarks.
Over the last couple of years, a serious public debate has started raging in the state about the whereabouts of the highly priced valuables: crowns, necklaces, bracelets, rings, bangles, robes, golden swords, watches, toys, etc left by the last ruler.
Assad says the government could have auctioned the treasures for the welfare of people and now no one knows what has happened to it.
In 1947, Maharaja left the Valley, however, he deposited eight steel trunks full of priceless treasures, conservatively worth Rs 1400 crores today, in Toshkhana (treasury) in Jammu, under the Nath's trusteeship.
Treasure was then shifted to Srinagar in 1951 and kept in Toshkhana at Residency Road.
Nath was responsible for the treasures for 36 years, till in 1983 he expressed his concern that who would be its custodian after his death.
Throughout this period (from1947 to 1983), he ensured the safety of the treasure in the dilapidated Toshkhana.
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