A man of law, old guns and mutinies. And a Kolkata museum you must visit – India Today

Biplab Roy, the Official Trustee of Bengal, has unearthed rare and centuries-old artifacts, documents, photos, cannons, arms and much more perishing in dust and neglect.

Biplab Roy with ammunition dating back to the 1800s

By Sumana Nandy: Curiosity doesn’t always kill the cat; sometimes it offers a new lease of life.

Biplab Roy, the current Administrator General and the Official Trustee of Bengal, would often walk by sealed rooms on the ground floor of his office at the New Secretariat Building in Kolkata. Nobody seemed to know what was behind the locked doors.

Roy took it upon himself to find out. And what he found stunned everyone around and an idea for a new museum was born.

Buried in dust inside the rooms along the labyrinth-like corridor, lay rare, centuries-old treasure – sketches, photos, documents, books and arms.

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Black and white photos of a three-decker tram on the roads, a replica of the Holwell Monument in ivory, a book on public hygiene written in 1919 by an Indian doctor during the outbreak of the Spanish flu, and several other rare artifacts covered in dust are now being restored by Roy.

Armed with his new finds, Roy set out on a quest for more, which took him around Bengal, looking for and finding a lot of ammunition, hundreds of years old – cannons, guns, swords used by the British and by armed revolutionaries of the time.

Then began the Herculean work to restore them and store them.

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“I entered the room with two others. Everyone warned me against it. But I was adamant. I wanted to know what was inside. I petitioned the government for approval to open the rooms, which have not been opened in over 30 years. On the day, we had officials from the Kolkata Police, the forest department, doctors, and an ambulance on standby. We went in with masks, sticks, sprays and gum boots,” Roy told indiatoday.in.

“The entire door caved as soon as we struck the lock and what stared at us was a grisly sight, to say the least. Things inside were completely damaged,” he reminisced.

“The forest officials declared that no snake could survive in this condition. We were initially worried that the room might be infested. They said that a snake would not be able to breathe in this dust. Once they greenlit our entry, I went in with my Home Guard and a Group D staff. And I began cleaning the place. In the paper dust, I sustained 20 per cent lung damage.

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“Then we began our recovery and found some sensational things, like items made of ivory, diamond jewellery, coins, artifacts, a gold-covered Bible from 1804, four volumes of stamp collections, a sketch made by Lt Col James Hunter in 1772 which was displayed at the London museum in 1804 after his death in 1792, the first lithographs from 1860, a huge number of damaged photographs from around the world, bullets from when the Sepoy Mutiny happened, guns, and the most notable one is the uniform of King Edward V, and his gold sword. We found rare documents – Supreme Court judgement from the 1800s, documents from the Sultanate period, mortgage papers of Dwarkanath Tagore’s home, a map of Kolkata.

“After that, I felt we must have a museum. Then I started collecting stone statues, swords, cannons. They were lying on the ghats of the Ganga. We went to Chuchura and fished them out with cranes and dug out those which were buried under the roads of Kolkata. We have the oldest guns,” he said.

“We were amazed to find these priceless objects lying in utter neglect for over 30 years,” he said.

Work is on to zero in on a place for the museum. Roy is looking for a February 2023 release.

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