(Left to right) Chief minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee and governor Viren J. Shah receive Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee at Dum Dum airport. Picture by Pabitra Das

Santiniketan, April 2: A week after the nation lost a most cherished badge of honour, Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee visited the scene of crime and linked the recovery of the stolen Tagore memorabilia to the recovery of the country’s honour.

Vajpayee, the chancellor of Visva-Bharati University, regretted that over a week’s hunt had failed to yield even one of the many treasures taken away in the audacious robbery at the Rabindranath Memorial Museum.

The theft is anything but “sadharan (ordinary)”, Vajpayee said. “Yeh badi khed ki baat hai ki Rabindranath Tagore ka Nobel prize aur doosre doormulya samagri itne din baad bhi wapas nahin aaye (It is a matter of deep regret that Rabindranath Tagore’s Nobel medallion and other valuables have not been recovered even after so many days).”

Implicit in the regret, many university officials felt, was an attempt to place some of the blame on the state’s Criminal Investigation Department, which started the probe but was later pilloried by CBI officials for goofing up the collection of fingerprints and other evidence.

The central bureau’s sleuths said a few days ago that many of the fingerprints collected by the CID and police belonged to the investigators themselves.

And there was also some implicit criticism of the authorities of Visva-Bharati, which comes under the Union government’s purview. After visiting the museum from where the medal and several other items used by Tagore and his wife Mrinalini Devi were stolen, Vajpayee said the security was inadequate.

A place housing so many treasures should have had better security, he observed. “I have spoken to the VBU authorities to beef up security immediately,” the Prime Minister said.

“The thieves knew their antique value and used high-tech gadgets to sneak inside,” he added.

Vajpayee was shown a small piece of ivory, earlier reported to be missing from the museum and found in a corner. “It seems that someone had left it there,” a senior CBI official said.

But despite the Prime Minister’s attempt to balance criticism, the political statement the visit made could not be ignored. The chancellor was accompanied by Trinamul Congress chief Mamata Banerjee and BJP MP Tapan Sikdar, besides governor Viren J. Shah.

He met CBI director U.S. Mishra, got a preliminary one-page report on the probe, and then closeted himself with vice-chancellor Sujit Kumar Basu and members of the internal probe committee the varsity had set up.

Vajpayee made it clear that any university employee found to have been a part of the heist would be dealt with “severely”. “We will have to be careful that such incidents do not recur.”

A former vice-chancellor, Sabyasachi Bhattacharya, has sent a proposal to the chancellor asking for a law to protect objects of historical and cultural interest.