Even as various wings of Hyderabad city police including Commissioner's Task Force and Central Crime Station were scouting for clues and following some leads to nab the culprits in Nizam Museum theft case, war of words has broken out among the family members of the royal family on who was responsible for the failure of security.
Two burglars had stolen two priceless artefacts - a two kg tiffin box made of gold and studded with rubies and other diamonds and a tea cup made of gold which experts valued at Rs 50 crore. The artefacts were part of a collection of antiques and valuable gifts presented to seventh Nizam of Hyderabad Mir Osman Ali Khan by his subjects in 1937 on the occasion of silver jubilee of his coronation. At present the entire investigation was banking on a 15 second clip of CCTV camera outside a mosque adjacent to the museum building in Purani Haveli area.
The camera caught a glimpse of the two offenders while they came running out of a by lane on the backside of the museum and ran away on a motor cycle which they had parked their earlier.
While one lanky youth had its face covered with a piece of cloth the face of the other person was blurred.
The clues team has also picked up a finger print which does not match with the security personnel or staff of the museum. The cops were now trying to match the print with the thousands of other finger prints of known offenders in their computers. Officials involved in the probe hoped that the result of the exercise will be known in a couple of days.
They were also using the "reverse analysis" method and going through the footage of CCTV cameras of shops and other places on various routes going from the scene of the crime whether they have recorded any moment of the suspects.
"It will hopefully lead us to their hideout or at least give us some lead", said an official pointing out that this method had helped the police recently in cracking the case of kidnapping of a child from Secunderabad station within a day.
"It was significant that the burglars took away only the two particular artefacts when there were many other items on display in the same gallery. This shows it was all preplanned and thieves must have conducted a recce before committing the crime", said Chaitanya Kumar, additional deputy commissioner of police, Task Force.
The sleuths were also scouting through the camera recordings of the past to see whether any suspect was doing the rounds of the area in the recent past.
As the motor cycle used to getaway by the offenders had no number plate and appeared to be new police men were going around the show rooms with the images of suspects to find from where they had purchased the bike.
Investigators were also going through the data of the mobile calls made from the area around the time the crime was committed in the wee hours of Monday to get some clue.
Deputy Commissioner of Police, Special Investigation Team Shikha Goel who inspected the scene of the crime found the security arrangements at the museum full of loopholes. “to prevent recurrence of such events the security will have to be upgraded”.
With the incident exposing pathetic state of affairs at the Museum packed with more than 450 priceless artefacts and memorabilia many descendants of Nizam and connoisseurs were up in arms against the Nizam’s Silve Jubilee Pavillion Trust headed by Prince Mufakkham Jah, younger grand son of the last Nizam.
Nawab Najaf Ali Khan, another grand son of the Nizam demanded resignation of the secretary and members of the Trust. “There was no security arrangement at all in the museum. CCTV cameras were old and many were not functioning. Why the security system was not upgraded is beyond me. We have been demanding to improve the security there”, he said.
Other family members pointed out that a suggestion was made to shift the Museum to Chowmohalla Palace near Charminar which had better security arrangements and could have provided much better ambience.
Princess Esra, former wife of Mir Mukarram Jah, the 8th Nizam, said that the incident was painful. Esra who is based in Turkey and holds the GPA for all the properties of Nizam including the Chowmohalla Palace said that idea of moving the collection to the palace was discussed but nothing came out of it.
The episode had also exposed the simmering differences between two brothers Australia based Mukarram Jah, who succeeded Mir Osman Ali Khan to the title of Nizam and his younger brother Mufakkham Jah who lives in Hyderabad.
It may be recalled here that while in power as the ruler of princely state of Hyderabad Mir Osman Ali Khan had the title of the “richest man in the world”. One of his collections of gems and jewelries was taken over by the government of India for Rs 273 crore but its real value in the international market was estimated to be at least half a billion dollars.
The artefacts at the Nizam’s Museum was one of the several collections of valuables spread in different palaces in the city. Some of them were at display at Chowmohalla, a constellation of four palaces while many others were allegedly stolen and smuggled out of the country over decades of negligence and apathy by the royal family.