[MSN] Agartala: A commandant of the Tripura State Rifles and a DSP were booked for theft last night after a widow complained that they snatched a sacred treasure chest owned and worshipped by her family for 200 years.

[MSN]

Top cops in treasure theft tangle
OUR SPECIAL CORRESPONDENT

Agartala, April 1: A commandant of the Tripura State Rifles and a DSP who
won the Policeman of the Year award for 2007 were booked for theft last
night after a widow complained that they snatched a sacred treasure chest
owned and worshipped by her family for 200 years.

Suchitra Jamatya of Nograi village near Amarpur, 125km from Agartala, said
officers Manik Mazumder and Pinaki Samanta led 15 armed personnel to her
house on Saturday and took away the 300-kg iron chest on the pretext of
preserving it in a museum.

No living member of Suchitra's family had ever opened the chest - the woman
said her great grandfather-in-law saw a "divine dream" and forbade his clan
from opening it - but they all believed it contained a golden idol of the
tribal deity Garia, a collection of gemstones, antique gold and silver coins
and jewellery.

However, the accused officers - Mazumder heads the 9th battalion and Samanta
is the DSP of the enforcement wing - told CID inspector-general L. Darlong
that they found the chest empty on breaking it open in the battalion
heaquarters at Baikhora.

They were detained today and are likely to be arrested tomorrow, sources
said.

The 15 Tripura State Rifles personnel who accompanied them to Nograi are
under investigation, too.

Suchitra, 65, told the police that four generations of her family had been
worshipping the chest twice everyday because it contained the idol of Garia,
the Jamatya god of war. She heard the story of how her family got hold of
the treasure from her husband Birbahu Jamatya.

Investigators quoted her as saying that the father of her great
grandfather-in-law, Bodhiram Jamatya, was a Sardar (chieftain) in Teliamura
during the reign of King Birchandra Manikya (1863-1896) and received the
chest as a reward for helping the monarch curb a revolt by Kuki tribesmen in
North Tripura.

Legend has it that Bodhiram, who inherited the chest, saw Lord Garia in a
dream and decided never to open the chest. He gave the key to the chest to
one of his sons living in a remote part of South Tripura to prevent anyone
from falling prey to greed.

The chest was kept in the ancestral Jamatya home in Teliamura till 1983,
after which Suchitra's husband was given the responsibility of protecting
and worshipping it. Teliamura is 25km north of Nograi.

Suchitra said she was not at home when the Tripura State Rifles contingent
came calling and took away the chest. Jamatya villagers of Nograi and its
nearby areas prompted her to file the FIR at Ampi police station against
Mazumder and Samanta on Sunday. She accused the police of sitting on the
complaint until the subdivisional police officer of Amarpur, Harimohan Das,
came to know of it.

State police chief K.T.D. Singh handed the case to the CID yesterday.

Darlong would say nothing except that the allegations against Mazumder and
Samanta, who was the assistant commandant of the 9th battalion for a while,
were being impartially probed.

The duo have been charged under Sections 457 (illegally breaking into a
house) and 380 (theft) of the IPC.

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