Fearing loss of antiquities for a proposed museum, a Judge seeks to stay his transfer

Biplab Roy fights to protect Rs 1000 crore worth of artefacts for State Judicial Museum in Kolkata.

Fearing that the antiquities, sculptures and guns that he has collected for the past few years for setting up a State Judicial Museum, the Administrator General and Official Trustee of West Bengal Biplab Roy has urged the Registrar General of Calcutta High Court to reconsider his transfer order. “That at present, all the artefacts, figures, sculptures, guns, cannons are scattered in our office which are required to be housed immediately so that none of the antiquities is lost or misappropriated which were given to me for the museum on trust,” Mr. Roy wrote in a letter addressed to the Registrar General on February 20.

According to the letter, the antiquities he has recovered from various parts of the State, and donated by private collectors are valued at about ₹1,000 crore. Soon after assuming office in July 2019, Judge Roy started collecting artefacts from various parts of the State for setting up the State Judicial Museum and Research Centre. Tapan Kumar Das, who teaches Ancient Indian History and Culture at the University of Calcutta said that he along with the students had donated about 200 artefacts which includes, terracotta objects and sculptures to Biplab Roy.

“We are concerned about the fate of the museum and what will happen to the artefacts we had donated for the museum,” Prof Das said. The academic said that some of the artefacts are 1,500 to 2,000 years old. Several others who have donated artefacts including old guns, statues and terracotta carvings from their personal collection have expressed their fears as to what will happen to the artefacts gifted to Biplay Roy. 

In the past four years, Biplab Roy has collected about 15 cannons from different parts of the State. These cannons were from the time of Sher Shah Suri, British period and one from the Dutch, who had also colonised parts of Kolkata’s suburbs.

Amitabha Karkun, a well-known expert in cannons and old guns, who has been associated with the process of identifying and dating these cannons, said that by recovering these historical artefacts Mr. Roy has elevated himself from a judicial officer to an explorer of our national history. The Office of the Administrator General and Official Trustee, West Bengal draws its origins from colonial times. The Office of the Administrator General of Bengal started functioning in 1874 and the Official Trustee of Bengal came into force in 1913. In 1916, the office of Administrator General and the Official Trustee were merged and the office of Administrator General and Official Trustee came into being and has continued to function since then.

The office is responsible for managing hundreds of prime properties and large parcels of land in Kolkata and the rest of the State. However, it was rare artefacts recovered at a warehouse of the office that kindled the interest of the judicial officer in preserving and restoration of artefacts through a judicial museum.

In September last year, the office of AGOT organised an exhibition ‘The City of Kolkata and its Life, 1870-1920’ at the city’s iconic Town Hall. Some of these photographs in the exhibition like an airplane landing at Eden Gardens and women performing final rites at a crematorium at Kalighat — not only offer a never-before peek into history but also offer an understanding of society in the late 19th and early 20th century.