Kolkata: In what could be easily termed a national disaster, India and the world woke up to the news nine years ago that Rabindranath Tagore’s Nobel medal along with its citation had been stolen from the museum in Shantiniketan.

The usual dismay that surrounds a disaster in India followed. Then Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee, the ex-officio Chancellor of the University, visited the campus and promised action.

The case was handed over to the Central Bureau of Investigation, considered the foremost investigating police agency in country, within days of the theft. But nothing materialised, and as of now the hunt is over. To date, the investigating agency does not know the motive behind the theft.

Along with the medal, Tagore’s favourite gold pocket watch, his wife Mrinalini Devi’s gold bangle and antique Baluchari saree, his father Debendranath Tagore’s gold ring, several silver utensils used by him and his family members and some articles made of ivory were also stolen.

“Till now we don’t know the motive behind the crime. Stealing such an object just for monetary value of gold seems unreasonable. At the same time it cannot be sold for its intrinsic value as there will be no buyer for it, considering it’s a stolen object known globally,” said a member of the investigating team.

“It has to have an insider connection but we interrogated at least 100 of the university staff but came up with nothing. Some people were arrested in Dhaka, Bangladesh in connection to the theft, but nothing came up,” he added.

It may seem strange, but Tagore would have been happy to get rid of his coveted prize. On November 13, 1913 Tagore was informed that the Nobel Prize for literature has been awarded to him.

He received the news with equanimity and humour and reportedly told an associate that the money for constructing a drainage system at Santiniketan has finally arrived, informs Supriya Mukhopadhay, son of Tagore’s biographer Prabhat Mukhopadhay.

But Tagore was not the only Nobel laureate whose prize was stolen. Nobel medallion won by physicist Ernest O Lawrence was stolen in March 2007 from the Lawrence Hall of Science in Berkeley, US. Lawrence won the award in 1939 for inventing the cyclotron, a particle accelerator.

The other stolen prize belonged to Kay Miller, who shared the 1985 Peace Prize with her colleagues at International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War. However, both the medallions were recovered successfully by local authorities.

“This goes to show how much we as a country care for the people who brought us fame and glory. The agencies happily informed that the case was closed, probably not realising that what there are saying is a shame on a nation which wants to be a global power,” said Suchitra Bose, a research student at Shantiniketan.