⚫ A cannon from the 1500s that was part of Islam Shah Suri’s artillery
⚫ A set of 10 muzzle-loading cap-lock pistols from the late 1700s and early 1800s that have been made popular by the Pirates of the Caribbean film franchise, among other movies
⚫ A Martini-Henry hunting rifle, similar to the one used by Jim Corbett in his expeditions
Antique firearms and artefacts that have been recovered from different parts of the state and have been restored were put on display in the office of the administrator general and official trustee of Bengal in the New Secretariat building on Thursday.
The items include a cache of firearms, cannons, swords and sculptures found in Chandraketugarh and the Sunderbans. They will find their way to the Judicial Museum and Research Centre that is being set up by Calcutta High Court.
The collection that was put on display on Thursday has been recovered by the administrator general and official trustee of West Bengal and his team from across the state.
Biplab Roy, administrator general and official trustee of West Bengal, said he had taken out a set of artefacts and antiques after he opened an old record room of the New Secretariat building at 1 Kiron Shankar Ray Road, which had been under lock and key for over three decades.
The room on the ground floor turned out to be a treasure trove. Roy said among his finds were land transfer deals dating back to the Mughal era, documents of Calcutta High Court from the Raj era and the house mortgage document of Prince Dwarkanath Tagore.
Amitabha Karkun, a war history enthusiast who is part of Roy’s team, said they were actively pursuing leads in recovering old weapons in order to restore them.
The team has also been trying to extricate two objects that resemble cannons near the Dum Dum Central jail.
National calendar released by PAC
Salt Lake: The national calendar, integral to determining festivals and holidays, was released at the Positional Astronomy Centre of the India Meteorological Department on Thursday.
The national calendar starts from the first day of Chaitra, which translates to March 22 this year.
Besides preparing the national calendar, the PAC prepares data on positional coordinates of celestial objects and related astronomical phenomena. The data is collated and published in the form of the annual Indian Astronomical Ephemeris.
“The Positional Astronomy Centre in Salt Lake is the only such unit in India. The PAC is the fruition of a journey that started seven decades ago,” said SanjibBandyopadhyay, the deputy director-general of IMD, Kolkata.
“At the time of Independence, India had different regional calendars. Each calendar has its unique characteristics. But there was a need to adopt a scientific approach to have one standard calendar. The process began under the first Prime Minister, Jawaharlal Nehru,” he said.
DEBRAJ MITRA