Bolpur (WB): The five year investigation by
the CBI into the theft of Rabindranath Tagore's Nobel medal
and other memorabilia from Rabindra Bhavan museum in
Santiniketan, was on Thursday officially closed.
ACJM, Bolpur, T N Bhakat accepted the petition of the CBI
to close the investigation.
The court's move comes after superintendent of police,
special crime branch, CBI, Kolkata wrote to the court on
August 20, 2009, that "We are not progressing with the probe".
The theft of the medallion and 47 other pieces of
memorabilia came to light on March 25, 2004. Five days later,
the CBI started an investigation. But after three years of
fruitless probe, the agency closed the case on August 30,
2007, only to reopen it on September 18, 2008.
Incidentally, on several occasions reports surfaced that
the medallion had been smuggled to Bangladesh but no concrete
proof could be obtained on this.
The Nobel Foundation replaced the original medal, which
the bard from West Bengal had won in 1913, with a replica in
gold in December, 2004, the year it was stolen.
PTI
First Published: Friday, August 06, 2010, 00:20