When Indira Gandhi ordered treasure hunt at Jaigarh Fort and Pakistan laid claim

It was August 1976, and a letter undersigned by Pakistan's Prime Minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto reached New Delhi.

The letter was addressed to the then Prime Minister of India, Indira Gandhi.

After talking about a few things about bilateral cooperation between India and Pakistan, the letter from Rawalpindi promptly jumped to a specific demand.

"I am writing to you about the treasure which is being unearthed in Jaipur under your Government’s orders... I would urge you to remain cognisant of Pakistan's claim to its due share of this wealth...," read Zulfikar Ali Bhutto's letter to Indira Gandhi.

Pakistan's Prime Minister, Bhutto, laid claim to Pakistan's share in the treasure that was being searched for in Jaipur's Jaigarh Fort on Indira Gandhi's orders.

We are reminded of the treasure hunt of 1976 under Indira Gandhi because of the talk of gold and mangalsutra in this Lok Sabha election.

If Prime Minister Narendra Modi alleged that the Congress planned to snatch mangalsutras, Priyanka Gandhi said her mother had given away her mangalsutra for the nation.

However, it is also true that Priyanka's grandmother Indira Gandhi had ordered the massive treasure hunt at Jaipur's Jaigarh Fort in 1976 after detaining Rajmata Gayatri Devi.

The treasure hunt was so loud that it reached Bhutto in Pakistan, and he thought of laying the Islamic Republic's claim on a treasure that he never knew of.

The treasure hunt was so colossal that it went on for five months in the Jaigarh Fort. The Army, the Income Tax Department, the Archaeological Survey of India and the local police were all engaged.

Just as Indira Gandhi had her sights set on the gold at Jaigarh Fort, Zulfikar Bhutto pursued the buried treasure too.

JAIGARH TREASURE STORY STARTED IN AFGHANISTAN

However, the treasure hunt which unfolded during the dark days of Emergency in 1976, actually had its origins at least a few hundred years ago during the reign of Mughal Emperor Akbar.

In the year, 1581, Akbar sent his commander-in-chief Raja Man Singh I of Jaipur to the northwest frontier to crush rebel kingdoms and chieftains, and tasked him with bringing parts of modern day Afghanistan under Mughal rule.

During this campaign, Raja Man Singh got hold of an unimaginable treasure trove of gold in Afghanistan and brought it back to India and hid it in the 16th century Amber Fort.

"Raja Man Singh I, one of the greatest generals in the mediaeval history of India, is said to have brought a huge amount of wealth from his Kabul expedition (1581-1587)." wrote RS Khangarot and PS Nathawat in their 1990 book, Jaigarh, The Invincible Fort of Amber.

They say that "the wealth was stored in no other fort than the Jaigarh", which came up later, in 1726.

Despite his loyalty to Akbar, it is believed that Man Singh didn't tell the Mughal emperor about the gold haul that he brought back from the Kabul expedition.

Years passed, and the treasure is believed to have remained hidden within the walls of the Amber Fort and in secret, until it was documented in an Arabian book.

The first mention of the treasure came up in a book titled 'Haft Tilismat-e-Amberi' (Seven magical treasuries of Amber) which said that the wealth in the treasuries were located in a place called 'sagar' (water tanks), behind the Amber fort.

Years on, during British rule, the colonial explorers also got hold of the book and grew curious. They tried to locate the treasure, but in vain.

INDIRA'S TREASURE HUNT BEGAN DURING THE EMERGENCY

Thre treasure hidden by Raja Man Singh, pursued by the British, was the very same treasure that Indira Gandhi went after. The hunt commenced at the peak of the Emergency, which Indira Gandhi imposed on 25 June 1975.

Civil liberties were suspended, the press was heavily censored, and political opponents like Jayaprakash Narayan, Atal Bihari Vajpayee and Morarji Desai were put behind bars.

Thousands of her critics languished in jails across India.

One of them was Gayatri Devi, who was seen to be disfavoured by Indira Gandhi, her political opponent. The former Maharani of the earstwhile princely state of Jaipur had defeated the Congress thrice to reach the Lok Sabha, even in the Congress era.

The treasure hunt at the Jaigarh Fort began just then, following the arrest of Gayatri Devi under the COFEPOSA Act, in a foreign currency case. The Act had to do with conservation of foreign exchange and prevention of smuggling activities.

THE BUZZ AROUND INDIRA GANDHI'S GOLD HUNT

Indira Gandhi, reportedly advised by her son Sanjay Gandhi, commenced the five-month-long treasure hunt.

A combined team of the Income Tax Department, the Army and the local police marched into the Jaigarh Fort, which had not seen such interest and footfall in the past. The news of the squad walking in brought back the 'seven magical treasuries of Amber' into the collective consciousness of the locals.

The Archaeological Survey of India was roped in too.

The eyes of the world were focused on the day-to-day happenings in Jaigarh during the wealth-diggings of 1976, according to the book Jaigarh, The Invincible Fort of Amber.

"It is also to be seen whether the Guinness Book of Records have taken note of this," write RS Khangarot and PS Nathawat in their 1990 book on the Jaigarh fort.

"As army helicopters would fly in and out of the fort, speculation about the treasure being found intensified, which was further fuelled by the visit of Indira's heir apparent Sanjay Gandhi on a chopper. The Jaigarh Fort was dug up and ravaged," says senior crime journalist Shams Taahir Khan in a Crime Tak story.

The surroundings of the Fort were cordoned off, which further spread the treasure hunt news, and eventually got to Pakistan and prompted Bhutto to write the letter to Indira Gandhi and claim the treasure, banking on an agreement between the two countries.

Indira Gandhi's replied to the letter from Pakistan's Prime Minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto only after the hunt was called off in November 1976.

"I had asked our legal experts to give careful consideration to the claim you made on behalf of Pakistan. They are of the clear opinion that the claim has no legal basis," Indira wrote back after five months.

While she rubbished the Pakistani claim, she informed Zulfikar Ali Butto, "Incidentally, the 'treasure' has turned out to be non-existent".

Gayatri Devi spent a bit more than five months in Delhi's Tihar Jail and was released after the Emergency was lifted.

"Indira Gandhi officially informed that no treasure was found in the Jaigarh Fort. Just 230 kg of silver was found," says Shams Taahir Khan.

JAIGARH FORT RAID ENDS BUT MYSTERY STAYS

However, even after the raid ended and the announcement of the findings was made, a few questions still remained.

Why was the 1726-built Jaigarh Fort raided, if Man Singh hid the Afghan treasure in the Amber Fort, probably during the last two decades of the 16th century?

The high-profile Sanjay Gandhi visit had already given birth to various hypotheses.

"The government's silence on why the Delhi-Jaipur highway was closed for a day which saw 50–60 trucks moving from Jaipur to Delhi," says the Crime Tak story as it notes another lingering unanswered question.

The answer to the choice of Jaigarh Fort, over the Amber Fort, where Man Singh hid the treasure, according to the Shams Taahir Khan report, is a tunnel connecting the Jaigarh Fort atop the Aravalis, overlooking the Amber Fort.

It is still a mystery where the treasure from the Afghan expedition went. Some claim that the treasure was used in building the city of Jaipur by the Maharaja.

Questions aside, Indira Gandhi's gold hunt in the Jaigarh Fort during the Emergency, targeting the ex-Maharani's glory, sparked debate if it was really a treasure hunt or a witch-hunt.

Given the hopeless and the undesirable yield of the treasure hunt, authors RS Khangarot and PS Nathawat, called it to be "a wild goose hunt", in the concluding chapter of their book named, 'Jaigarh, The Invincible Fort of Amber'.