Where is the sword? No one knows.
Back in his swashbuckling days, Vijay Mallya had bought – with much fanfare – Tipu Sultan’s sword. Now it appears that the prized possession has vanished, and no one knows its whereabouts. The matter came to the fore when a consortium of 13 Indian banks tried hard to convince the London High Court against discharging a freeze order on the global assets of Vijay Mallya.
Mallya owes Rs 9000 crore to Indian banks and had bought the Tiger of Mysore’s sword in London in 2004. However, he said he gave it away in 2016 because it was bringing bad luck. The sword is worth around Rs 1.8 crore and no one knows where it lies.
The lawyers representing the consortium of Indian banks said that they were at risk of Mallya ‘dissipating his assets’. According to one report, Mallya had tried to give away the give away the sword to a museum for safe-keeping but they had refused citing the maintenance issues. Even Tipu Sultan’s successor, has no clue what happened to the sword.
The family had tried to purchase it from Mallya but to no avail. Sahebzada Mansoor Ali told TOI: “As far as our understanding goes, the sword is nowhere to be seen. Neither the small museum of Tipu Sultan in Srirangapatna nor any of the family members have it. Mallya never disclosed the location of the sword to anyone.”
Mallya’s lawyer meanwhile argued that the sword vanishing wasn’t proof that Mallya was trying to hide or dispose his assets. He said: “Insofar as you are looking for actual dissipation of assets, this (the sword) is it. He disposed of it at a time that he had put forward a settlement offer in excess of what claimants (the banks) wanted. So it was not a dissipation. His explanation is he was told by his family that they thought it was bringing him bad luck and I think it would be fair to say something was bringing him bad luck. We should not question superstition in other cultures.”
During Prime Minister Narendra Modi and British counterpart Theresa May's talks on economic offenders, the case of absconding liquor baron Vijay Mallya was also discussed, according to sources. Indian Foreign Secretary Vijay Gokhale, during a press briefing, confirmed that the issue of economic offenders was also raised during the meet.
"The issue of economic offenders was also raised and this was among a number of consular issues that were raised," Gokhale said.Mallya is wanted in India in a money laundering case and an alleged bank fraud case in the country. He left India after defaulting on loans that run into hundreds of crores.India has submitted more than thousand pages dossier in the London court as part of the evidence against Mallya. Earlier in January, the court extended the bail of Mallya to April 2 in connection with the case.
Mallya, who was arrested by Scotland Yard on an extradition warrant in April last year, is out on bail on a bond worth 650,000 pounds. Apart from this case, the High Court of London on February 12 had ordered Mallya to pay an estimated USD 90 million to a Singapore-based aircraft leasing company in claims. The case involves a number of aircraft leased by Vijay Mallya's now-defunct Kingfisher Airlines from BOC Aviation in 2014.
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