SC To Hear Plea On Relocating Tomb In Madras HC
New Delhi: On Friday, the Supreme Court accepted an objection to the order of re -establishing the graves of David Yale and Joseph Hynmer in the Madras Supreme Court building and ordered the protection of the status quo.
On the Supreme Campus, the graves in the compound of Madras Legal College (now DR Ambedkar Government Legal College), Fort St. In January 1921 in George Newspaper, monuments protected through a notification were declared.
A counter of Vikram Nath and Sandeep Mehta published notifications to the Ministry of Culture and others, and within four weeks they sought answers about the defense that challenged the Supreme Court Decision in April 2025.
During the hearing, the senior defender Shyam Divan, who appeared in the petition, asked for the protection of the monuments. Apex Court, “the return that can be refundable within four weeks… The status quo will be protected when it comes to this monument,” he said.
The issue stems from the June 2023 single referee’s order of the Supreme Court of Madras, allowing an objection to the tombs that the tombs are not ancient monuments. In April 2025, a section counter updated this order and rejected the objections.
The Supreme Court said that the tombs belong to the former governor of Madras (1687-1692), son of David Yale and Yale’s friend Joseph Hynmer. Elihu Yale then returned to England in 1699 and then evolved to Yale University Connecticut College, donated to the United States.
The court observed that Yale University’s Tamil Research Department, including the establishment of the Tamil Research Department of Yale University, in addition to the references to the subsequent contributions of Elihu Yale in the USA, as well as no materials to create the historical, archaeological or artistic value of the tombs.
