By Dipankar De Sarkar, IANS,
London : An Indian soldier’s George Cross medal that has been put up for auction in London next week was sold by his widow in 2000 — and not stolen from her as she claims — the auction house said Friday.
“I have two signed, stamped and witnessed affidavits to prove it. I don’t believe these claims for the medal to be returned are coming from her,” said Nimrod Dix, managing director of Dix Noonan Webb.
The medal, Britain’s highest civil decoration for bravery out of combat, was awarded posthumously to Naik Kirpa Ram of the Frontier Force Rifles in 1946.
It is set to be auctioned Dec 2 and could fetch around 20,000 pounds, but Kirpa Ram’s widow Brahmi Devi is trying stop the sale, saying the medal was stolen from her house in 2002.
But Dix said he has an April 2000 affidavit from Brahmi Devi, in which she says she was “unable to keep this medal” and was therefore making a gift of it to a man named Kapil Singh “with my sweet will”.
Brahmi Devi describes Kapil Singh as a collector and the son of Makhan Singh.
In his affidavit, signed June 2000, Kapil Singh says he received the medal as a gift for “services I have provided for the past years” and that he in turn was handing over the medal to S.L. Jain, whom Dix identified as a Delhi-based dealer.
The auction house finally acquired the medal from a retired Indian Army officer and “a collector of a good number of medals”, Dix said.
Brahmi Devi, who received the medal from the Viceroy of India, Field Marshal Lord Wavell at the age of 13, claims it was stolen from her house in Papral village in Bilaspur district in 2002.
The Chhattisgarh police has asked the Central Bureau of Investigation to approach Interpol in order to recover the medal. But Dix said the auction will go ahead, adding: “The legal title is clearly passed”.
He guessed the medal would have exchanged hands for between 3,000 and 4,000 pounds in 2000 but would be worth “nearer 20,000 pounds today on a good day”.
Dix said he suspected Brahmi Devi had made the theft allegation because “a lot of people hold her in very high regard”.
“She has always been in an impoverished state, and well-meaning people who help her may have suggested that she should sell the medal. But by that time she had already disposed of it years ago,” he told IANS.
Naik Kirpa Ram was awarded the medal for sacrificing his life to save his army comrades from harm while disposing of a misfired rifle grenade at a camp in Bangalore Sep 12, 1945.