The Daimler-Benz that has gone missing from Narayanhiti Palace was not gifted by Hitler, and the German dictator gifted a Daimler-Benz not to King Tribhuvan but to Rana Prime Minister Juddha Shumsher.
Juddha Shumsher's Daimler-Benz is in Deharadun, India and is now owned by his daughter.
A research has found that the car that got media attention a few days ago was not Hitler's gift. According to Juddha Shumsher's surviving kin, the 1936 Daimler-Benz was gifted to the Rana ruler in the late 1930's, and not to Tribbuvan.
"The gift was for my father Juddha SJB Rana. My father was the de facto ruler while King Tribhuvan was only a de jure ruler," said Janak Rajya Laxmi Devi Shah, 92, one of Juddha's daughters.
Juddha Sumsher was the seventh Rana prime minister and he ruled Nepal for 13 years, before abdicating in favor of his nephew in November 1945. He then left Nepal to settle in Dehradun, India. He took the Daimler-Benz along with him.
Shah inherited the olive-green car after the death of her father and mother in 1952 and 1954, respectively.
She is still owner of the car as she has not transferred the ownership to anybody else. However, as the car was never registered in Nepal, she could not bring it when she decided to move back to Nepal in 1966. "I left the car to my brother Sashi SJB Rana," said Shah, who is a DAV College law graduate.
Shah used the car while studying and living in Dehradun for 17 years. "I used to offer lifts in that car to my professors on the way home from college," fondly recalls Shah, who started her formal education at the age of 36 and yet became a lawyer at the Supreme Court of Nepal.
However, until very lately she did not know that her parents' gift to her was gifted to her father by Hitler himself.
Shah said the car was used by her father in Nepal and they used take it to Hanuman Dhoka and to big parties. She believes it was the first car to enter Nepal.
"I rode in cars since my childhood, and that car was just like other ordinary cars for us," said Shah, who is still active in social work.
There is no official document on why Hitler sent the gift to Juddha SJB Rana, but the latter's relatives have their own story. Lt. Colonel (retd) of the Nepali Army and former Military Attaché in New Delhi, Prabal SJB Rana, and Bedendra SJB Rana, son-in-law to Shah, said the gift was to persuade the Gurkhas not to support Britain in the looming Second World War. Britain and France declared war on Germany in 1939 after Hitler's invasion of Poland.
Hitler had even sent a medal for Juddha, according to Binod SJB Rana, youngest son of Juddha. "But we are not sure whether that medal was sent along with the Daimler."
courtesy: ekantipur.com
