Security lacunae put Indian Museum at risk

KOLKATA: Indian Museum, one of the oldest and largest museums in Asia-Pacific, is a sitting duck for sabotage, with no power backup for the 429 CCTV cameras during an outage. Even 15 years after the theft of a fifth-century sandstone Buddha bust from Long Gallery, the security of Indian Museum has not been handed to CISF. This, despite a Supreme Court verdict to do so.

Experts have raised concerns over the museum’s security. “It is appalling how Indian Museum has been kept insecure. The ministry of culture pumps in crores of rupees. A power backup is a basic requirement for museum security. Allowing these cameras to go blank during a outage is serious breach of security,” said P K Mishra, archaeologist and former regional director (east) of Archaeological Survey of India.


Indian Museum’s safety concerns were heightened after its director Rajesh Purohit entrusted the job of its security with Hindi translator of the establishment, Ashok Tripathi, seemingly undermining the role of security officer, Joydeep Das, an inspector-rank officer of the Kolkata Police.

“Allowing cameras to go off seems a deliberate move. When I moved the Supreme Court, following the theft of the Buddha bust, I came across smuggling racket in the Museum. I appealed to the SC to order an inventory report of objects, besides deploying CISF,” said Subhas Dutta.

A former Indian Museum director pointed out that the CISF should have been deployed by now unless the museum authorities dragged its feet. Unless a professional agency, like CISF, was deployed, the museum’s safety would be compromised, he said.

Sachindranath Bhattacharya, a former Board of Trustee (BOT) member of the museum, said, “Appointing Tripathi as the security in-charge and reducing the security officer’s responsibility also seems a violation of the code of conduct. The security officer is under the police commissioner and deputed by the state on the order of the BOT chairman and Bengal governor. Changing his responsibility is violating the order.”

Museum director Purohit said, “Power backup is not needed as CCTV cameras capture images even during an outage. As such, Indian Museum doesn’t face outage too often.”