Wrap-up: Some days are diamond

Making a U-turn on the Kohinoor issue, the government on Tuesday said it will make all efforts to bring back the valued diamond which, it had said earlier in the Supreme Court, was “neither stolen nor forcibly” taken by the British rulers but given to it by the erstwhile rulers of Punjab.

In a statement, the government claimed it has not yet conveyed its views to the court, “contrary to what is being misrepresented” in the media.

The statement said that the status report on which the preliminary submission was made by the solicitor-general has references to the stand taken by governments earlier that the Kohinoor was a gift and cannot be categorised as an object stolen.

The government statement came a day after the solicitor-general told the Supreme Court: “Kohinoor cannot be said to have been forcibly taken or stolen as it was given by the successors of Maharaja Ranjit Singh to the East India Company in 1849 as compensation for helping them in the Sikh wars.”

It literally means ‘mountain of light’
It was mined in medieval times in the Kollur mine in Andhra Pradesh’s Guntur district.

The diamond was originally owned by the Kakatiya Dynasty, which had installed it in a temple of a Hindu goddess as her eye.

Until the year 1304, the diamond was in the possession of the Rajas of Malwa. In 1304, it belonged to the Emperor of Delhi, Allaudin Khilji.

In 1339, the diamond was taken back to the city of Samarkand, where it stayed for almost 300 years.

A descendant of Ahmad Shah, Shah Shuja Durrani brought the Kohinoor back to India in 1813 and gave it to Ranjit Singh (the founder of the Sikh Empire).