15 August,2011 07:08 AM IST | | Sayed Roshan
Seventy-nine year old Bherumal Gurnani may have succeeded in driving the British out of the country by participating in the freedom movement 64 years ago, but even he is finding it difficult to tame the twin demons of babudom and official apathy in free India.
Bherumal Gurnani and his wife Lachmi show
the box in which the jewellery was kept
Not only have Gurnani's repeated attempts to make the police file an FIR related to a theft of jewellery worth Rs 65 lakh from a bank locker come to nought, the bank manager has even gone to the extent of suggesting that he and his wife may have taken the jewellery out themselves and forgotten about it because of their old age.
For the couple, who don't even have a pension to fall back upon, the jewellery was their life's savings.
The Gurnanis found out about the missing jewellery on July 26, when Bherumal's wife, Lachmi went to the Canara Bank's Matunga branch to check their locker.
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She was surprised to see their jewellery gone and immediately alerted the bank manager, who said he was clueless about it.
Gurnani, who participated in the Quit India Movement and was jailed in Sindh because of it, said he has been running from pillar to post to make the bank officials and the police investigate the case, but to no avail.
"The locker had almost 25 tolas (250 grams) of antique jewellery, which had been passed on through generations in our family and was inherited by me in 1975. The jewellery represented my only major savings.
The least the police can do is register an FIR in the case and begin investigations," said Gurnani.
"I took part in the Quit India Movement during the British rule and I am aggrieved that such a thing has happened to me in free India and the police couldn't care less," he added.
Lachmi alleged that when they visited the police station to file an FIR against the bank on July 27, they were humiliated by the police, who accused them of having taken the jewellery themselves and refused to take down their plaint.
"The policemen told us that we must have taken the jewellery ourselves. They could have at least taken the fingerprints from the locker to trace the thief, but they weren't bothered.
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Why would we take the jewellery and then cry foul? That was the only savings we had.
The Gurnanis with the empty plastic container in which
they had kept the jewellery in the locker
How will we survive in these inflationary times when my husband, who worked as a chartered accountant, does not even get a pension?" asked an upset Lachmi.
"The jewellery was a family heirloom and we intended to pass it on to our children as well. The police have only accepted our written complaint and have refused to file an FIR," she added.
Gurnani said he had been arrested in Sindh for being part of the Quit India Movement. He and his family moved to India when the partition took place and stayed in transit camps, where they were tagged refugees.
Freedom Hero
He said one of the happiest days of his life was when the then prime minister Jawaharlal Nehru announced that the refugees should be treated as Indians and Gurnani and his family settled here for good.
The Other Side
Senior Police Inspector Ramrao Desai of Mahim police station said, "We have not received a complaint from the bank about the theft and, thus, an FIR cannot be lodged when no crime has taken place.
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The family is crying foul."u00a0"The locker of the bank can only be opened by two keys one is with the customer and the other one is with us. Even we don't know what is kept in a customer's locker, so how can anyone steal something from there?
We had informed the police and they had come and said that if someone had forced open the locker, there would have been some damage to it, which is not the case," said Krishnakanth Shrivastav, manager of Canara Bank's Matunga Branch.
"I respect them because they are old and I think that they might have forgotten that they took out the gold from their locker. There are no close-circuit television cameras installed in the locker room,"
he added.
