New Delhi, Jan. 31: The heirs of the late Gayatri Devi, former maharani of Jaipur, have approached the Delhi high court to get back 800 kg of gold seized by the government in 1975 after her husband, the late Maharaja Sawai Man Singh, failed to declare it to the income-tax authorities as stipulated by the Gold Control Act 1968.
This law has now been repealed.Following Gayatri Devi’s death on July 29 last year, her eldest son, Brig. Sawai Bhawani Singh (Retd), challenged the 1980 order by the gold control administrator in Delhi, and said in his petition to the court: “There is no reason for us to believe that the entire gold had not been declared under the Gold Control Act.”Union government counsel S.K. Dubey, however, told Justice S. Muralidhar that under the Gold Control Act and the Indian Defence Rules 1968, possession of raw gold was illegal and, if found, had to be sold to authorised dealers or a goldsmith within six months.Mr Dubey also said the family has violated both the legal provisions, so a fine of Rs 1.5 crore was imposed on them. It was later reduced to Rs 80 lakhs. Mr Dubey’s arguments are likely to continue in court on Monday.In his petition, Brig. Bhawani Singh drew attention to the fact that he had been awarded the Maha Vir Chakra for gallantry for his role in the 1971 India-Pakistan war, and sought the court’s intervention to have the I-T department’s confiscation order set aside and declared null and void. He said: “A person of such high devotion to the country’s cause would not go and break the laws of the country knowingly.”The family moved the Delhi high court after losing a legal battle in Rajasthan in 2002, when a local court held that the gold confiscated from a royal fort in Jaipur was part of a hidden treasure, and that under the Indian Treasure Trove Act 1878 the ownership of any hidden treasure lies with the state government. The Jaipur royal family had contended that the fort was part of the family’s private property, and no one was entitled to have any claim over it.Kanu Sarda