Sparking a fresh controversy over royal assets, a former Rana Prime Minister’s daughter has said the Mercedes purportedly gifted by Adolf Hitler to ousted King Gyanendra’s grandfather is not at Narayanhiti palace, but was taken to India in 1943.The German dictator had donated an olive-green Daimler-Benz not to King Tribhuvan, the titular head, but to Rana dynasty Prime Minister Juddha Shamsher Rana in 1939 to win the Gorkha soldiers to his side during World War II, according to Juddha Shamsher’s only surviving daughter Janak Rajya Laxmi Shah, 92.Officials deputed by the government to acquire the royal assets in the palace, which was declared a museum following the ouster of Gyanendra, had earlier claimed that they had found the car gifted by Hitler to Tribhuvan, Gyanendra’s grandfather, and it will be put on display.Shah said that her father Juddha Shamsher, who was the seventh Rana Prime Minister, left to settle down in Dehradun, India after ruling for 13 years in 1945 and took the car with him.“He (Juddha) took the Daimler-Benz along with him,” Shah told the Kathmandu Post daily, adding she inherited the car after the death of her father and mother in 1952-1954.Hitler had probably donated the car to Nepal thinking that it would not take the side of Britain and France that waged war against Germany during the World War II after it invaded Poland, according to the daily.Nepal’s history has been marred by a power struggle between the kings of Shah dynasty and its Rana prime ministers who ruled through generations. Tribhuvan had to flee to India with his son Mahendra and grandson Birendra in November 1950, following a power struggle with the then prime minister Mohan Shamsher Jang Bahadur Rana.
