Fifty years after partition, the Indian Ministry of Home Affairs has seized the unclaimed contents of lockers and safe deposits that were sent to India in 1961.
According to a report by the Economic Times, the owners of these valuables were people who had migrated from Pakistan to India in 1947.
The Indian home ministry released a notice on Feb 20, 2015 saying the reclaimed valuables are now the property of the Government of India and the central government is free to exercise discretion in the disposal of the valuables.
In 1950, Pakistan and India signed an agreement, the premise of which was to return locker contents to their owners whether they had migrated to India or Pakistan.
As a result of the agreement, the valuables and personal items were sealed and transported to India in 1961 where they remained under the care of the Reserve Bank of India, New Delhi.
Two public notices were issued in 1979 and 1991 asking the owners of the goods to claim them. The State Bank of India and ANZ Grindlays Bank released more items to the ministry in 1990.
A consolidated inventory of the unclaimed items was completed in January this year by a committee of ministry officers, the RBI and the local executive magistrate.
The Central Government, in the notification, deemed it fair to declare the property as ‘unclaimed’ and seize it.
