The Mysterious Disappearance of the Patiala Necklace

India has a long-standing history of losing (read:being looted) of its intricate pieces of ridiculously expensive jewels in which are sewed not just diamonds and rubies but also years of Indian heritage. Cases in point: the world-famous Kohinoor, gold-laden personal belongings of the last Nizam of Hyderabad, the gold dagger gifted to Jawaharlal Nehru and more. A much lesser known ‘misplacing’ was that of the Patiala necklace commissioned by Maharaja Bhupinder Singh to the House of Cartier to flounder his wealth in the best possible way, all while making a huge spectacle out it which is really the Indian way of doing things.

This Patiala necklace screamed splendour and grandiose with a staggering 2,930 diamonds and Burmese rubies encrusted which sat beside the 234.6 carat De Beers diamond-only the world’s seventh largest diamond. One would ponder that the world’s most expensive piece of jewellery ever made would have a better security team assigned to it. So naturally the question arises after basking in both Eastern and Western glory for two decades, where did the necklace go from the national treasury of Patiala? A little Chinese whisperer has it that the functioning government at the time had many hands to play in its sudden and quiet disappearance in 1948 after the British Raj disintegrated. This theory does explain why there’s absolute radio silence about the ravishing Patiala Necklace because if the media had its way, a national treasure that big would’ve been feeding TRP wars all over the world.

After this ‘mysterious’ disappearance or planned robbery, whatever you want to call it, the De Beers diamond slithered like a snake in the Sotheby’s Auction without its parent aka the necklace. Sadly, the rest of the necklace was battered apart, pieces of which ‘mysteriously’ stumbled across Cartier Associate, Eric Nussbam at a vintage jewellery store along the glorious streets of London. While the historic necklace was eventually restored by Cartier, it still runs the risk of being under our radar of questions regarding its disappearance and reappearance. All we can assure is the truth is far from what we've been feed and would be no less devious than the plot of an Agatha Christie novel.