Theft of jewel box from bank an In-house act

VIZIANAGARAM: The veil of mystery over the missing jewels of the Vizianagaram royal family is going to lift soon. The Crime Branch- Criminal Investigation Department(CB-CID), which has conducted a painstaking and prolonged investigation, is believed to have traced the jewels to Madhuri Gajapathi Raju, the third wife of the late PVG Raju and step-mother of Pusapati Ananda Gajapathi Raju who lodged a complaint that the jewels were missing from the bank lockers here.The CID is likely to submit its report to endowments commissioner Balaramayya who sought the inquiry following a complaint from Ananda Gajapthi Raju, chairman of the  Maharajah Alak Narayana Society for Arts and Science (MANSAS), that a jewel box deposited with the State Bank of India here in 1957 was missing.In 1957, the Vizianagaram Samsthan had decided to hand over the temples which were constructed in the fort and its properties to the endowments department. A trust, MANSAS, was formed for the purpose, which is controlled and supervised by the department. The trust deposited a box containing Rs 10 crore worth of gold, silver and other precious ornaments of the temples with SBI’s main branch on May 8, 1957. The box, numbered 13/62, was opened only once later _ on December 12, 1967 _ to check its contents by the then diwan, Suryanarayana. PVG Raju, the Rajah Saheb, did not bother to verify the jewels. On February 3, 2010 PVG Raju’s son and present chairman of MANSAS Ananda Gajapthi Raju opened the bank locker to check the jewellery box in the presence of endowments officials and, to his consternation, found only silver ornaments in the box and the gold missing. With the efforts of the then endowments assistant commissioner Ch Hanumantha Rao and his team to trace the box failing,  Ananda Gajapathi wrote a letter to the SBI on February 12 complaining of the theft.The assistant commissioner issued a notice to the bank on the missing jewel box at that time but the bank did not respond. Raju then urged the endowments department to probe the ‘theft’. The then chief manager of SBI Y Ramesh Kumar said they had informed the controller of the bank about the incident but declined to say anything more.Perusal of the bank records showed that the jewel box was withdrawn by the then diwan of Rajah Saheb from the bank on August 18, 1988. But it had no details as to who accompanied the diwan and other things.The then commissioner of endowments JSV Prasad viewed the matter seriously and asked the officials to get to the bottom of the case.