Sahil Sharma — Sahil sharma

Sep 15, 2016

Updated by anonbali The adventures of Bali Ram Sharma, who has a plush office-cum-shop in one of Delhi's classy residential areas could well be the plot for a box-office Hindi film. Starting life as a peon at the headquarters of the Archaeological Survey of India at Delhi, Sharma's aesthetic initiation came with his appointment as an assistant to a senior director with whom he went to most of the treasure houses in the land and overheard his way into the secrets of the antiques market. The Kangra Valley, home among others of Moghul miniatures, Sharma is supposed to have devoured in the first stage of his new career.
Kidnap Drama: A perceptive revelation of Sharma's fortunes after he left the Archaeological Survey comes from the episode of his kidnapping by a dacoit chief operating around Gwalior. In the early '70s, Sharma was lured to Gwalior with promises of securing a cache of rare antiques.
Shortly after his departure from Delhi, his family received a ransom demand from the dacoit chief who wanted Rs 700, 000 in exchange for Sharma. While his brothers, one of whom still works in the Publications Division of the Archaeological Survey, began arranging the ransom, Sharma's dare-devil wife went down to Gwalior, tracked down the dacoit and duped him on Raksha Bandhan day into adopting her as a sister.
Later she asked her 'raakhee' brother to free Sharma and the proud Chambal Valley Thakur, though it might have broken his heart, found it impossible to desecrate local tradition by breaking his word to his adopted sister. The deal was reported closed with Rs 100, 000 changing hands, the money taken by the dacoit as the share for a partner in the kidnapping.
Recently, Sharma turned the tables on the Delhi Police and the Archaeological Survey when he got the courts to release a large number of sculptures that the police had unearthed at his huge Mehrauli farm in 1975, because the prosecution could not prove that these were over a 100 years old and ought to be classified as antiques.
The Archaeological Survey and the CBI antiques unit are requesting state CIDs to set up antique cells at all district centres but as Bal Kishen Thapar, Director General of the Archaeological Survey of India put it, what is necessary is the policing of the antique dealers and a national drive so that villagers and townsmen feel the need to preserve local sculptures and art objects Thapar pointed out that small-time temple priests at remote centres are stunned by the huge sums of money offered and do not see much wrong in replacing an old, even dilapidated idol with a bright new marble one.
Though the Antiquities and Art Treasures Act, 1972 makes it compulsory for Indian owners of antiques to register their pieces, nobody is convinced that the dealers have yet brought out all their collection nor are they likely to care too much for the law when they acquire new rarities.
Indian business tycoons have lately come in as big-time collectors, often paying black money to dealers for the unique piece and, according to whispers in the antiques market, at least some of these pillars of the economy buy and sell antiques too.