Priyamvada jewels with kin: Lodha

Rajendra Singh Lodha today filed a petition in the Calcutta High Court seeking court's order to recover jewellery belonging to the late Priyamvada Birla from other members of Birla family and their relatives.

Justice K J Sengupta directed Lodha to serve notice to the individuals named in the petition and fixed the case for hearing on December 12, 2005.

The Birla family members on the list included Radhika Birla, Avanti Birla Rajshree Birla, Sobhana Bhartia and Asha Mohata.

In the petition, Lodha sought for a direction upon the persons to state on affidavit the status of the items of jewellery shown against their respective names in the list.

Moving the petition ex-parte, Anindya Mitra, Protap Chatterjee and Debajan Mondal, counsel for Lodha, stated in the court that their client had come across some files of Late Priyamvada Birla in which names of the persons with whom certain ornaments of Priyamvada Birla were lying had been recorded.

It was alleged in the petition that a one-page list along with remarks of the valuation report of the ornaments had been identified to be in the hand writing of R P Pansari, a close associate of Birla family.

Lodha had waited till the inventory of properties in Birla Park, the Kolkata residence of Priyamvada Birla, was completed by the court appointed special officer and the report of the officers was made available to him, the counsel said.

'Before the inventory, Lodha could not be sure as to whether those ornaments and jewellary mentioned in the list by Pansari were given back to Priyamvada Birla and kept by her in the iron safe at Birla Park', the petition said.

The counsel said that from the report of the special officers it has now been found that those items of jewellery have not been found at Birla Park.