Heritage theft ahead of Hollande’s visit

Aneesha Sareen

 Tribune News Service 

Chandigarh, January 19

Ahead of French President Francois Hollande’s visit to the city on January 24, thieves decamped with Le Corbusier-designed heritage furniture, including 15 sofa chairs and a table, from the storeroom of Government College of Art late last night. 

The thieves made their way in by snapping the barbed wire on the college’s boundary wall. They broke three locks to enter the storeroom located in the basement. They took away the locks too.

A case has been registered on the complaint of storekeeper Vinod Kumar at the Sector 3 police station.

Watchmen Ajit and Krishan Kumar, in their statements to the police, claimed that they had visited the storeroom during the night hours and had found nothing amiss. The locks were intact too. But these were found missing when they inspected the storeroom at 6 am. The furniture was gone.

The college has issued a notice to the watchmen. The police are wary of the watchmen’s claim. They say as there was dense fog last night, had the two kept a close watch, the theft could not have occurrred.

The incident brings to the fore the apathy of the college management towards precious heritage items lying on its premises. The college has no record as to when the furniture was kept in the storeroom and who were the employees who had carried the items to the storeroom. 

The police believe the thieves were aware of the fact that the furniture lying in the basement was part of the city heritage and, hence, precious.

Inspector Neeraj Sarna, SHO, said they were examining the CCTV footage at the Matka roundabout and nearby sites. 

In September 2015, thieves had stolen eight wooden chairs and two tables after breaking the windows of the exhibition hall of Le Corbusier Centre in the city.

The heritage items have been fetching thousands of euros in auctions held abroad. In May last year in Paris, nine furniture items were auctioned for 2,11,450 euros.