A Tagore painting in the Rabindra Bhavan museum: Safe?

Santiniketan, April 19: A year after Tagore?s Nobel medal was stolen from the Rabindra Bhavan museum, a guard on duty at the treasure trove was caught sprawled on a make-shift bed, snoring on a pillow with a mosquito-repellent burning near his head to keep disturbance at a distance.

Ananda Gopal Sinha was served a showcause notice yesterday.

Visva-Bharati registrar Sunil Kumar Sarkar said action will be taken against Sinha if he fails to provide a satisfactory explanation in a fortnight.

Sarkar said: ?Sinha was on night shift and was supposed to be doing his regular rounds of checks in the Uttarayan complex.?

A week ago, Bolpur subdivisional police officer Rabindranath Sarkar went to the museum on a surprise mission around two in the morning. He found Sinha blissfully asleep in a veranda. The police team had to shake him back to consciousness. The bed and the pillow were seized.

Last year, on the morning of March 25, the Visva-Bharati authorities discovered that the Nobel medal and various other memorabilia had been smuggled out of the museum. After the police and CID failed to make much headway, the investigation was handed over to the CBI.

The probe is still on and none of the stolen objects have been recovered.

At night, three men, including two armed National Volunteer Force personnel, guard the museum, Visva-Bharati security officer Arup Sil said. During the day, six security men, including two armed personnel, monitor the complex. Four of them sit at the main entrance and two keep watch inside the museum.

But a year after the heist, several security personnel posts are still lying vacant in the university. The police have stepped up night patrolling on the campus, particularly the Uttarayan complex, but the apparatus is apparently not foolproof.