Port Blair, Jan 30: The Andaman and Nicobar Administration today clarified that no original fittings or articles of Cellular Jail will be handed over to any other organisation including ‘Swatantryaveer Savarkar Rashtriya Smarak’ of Dadar, Mumbai.
“There is no official move to take away any original fittings or articles of Cellular Jail, which are connected to Veer Savarkar by the Swatantryaveer Savarkar Rashtriya Smarak at Dadar as some media report claim. We have absolutely no idea about this,” a senior officer of Andaman’s Arts, Culture and National Memorial Department told ‘Andaman Sheekha’ today, who does not want his name to be quoted.
Recently a news story released by a news agency quoted SSRS president Arun S. Joshi saying that ‘while some of Veer Savarkar’s belongings have already been brought to Mumbai, a team will leave for Andaman and Nicboar Islands Feb 1 to bring back some other articles.’
The news did not go down well with the Islanders of Andaman and Nicobar Islands.
“Infact most of the articles displayed in Cellular Jail are actually replicas of originals as after invasion of Japanese Forces, every important articles and fittings were lost. However only the structure of Cellular Jail and a few selected articles are originals,” the officer added.
The officer mentioned that it is during the tenure of previous Lt. Governor, Prof. Ram Kapse, a team from Mumbai had visited Cellular Jail and taken away few fallen bricks and an unused iron grill doors, which was kept in store room of Cellular Jail.
“The question of handing over original fittings and articles to another museum doesn’t arise when we have only a handful of them,” the officer of Directorate of AC & NM added.
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