New Delhi: Bangladesh's elite police force, Rapid Action Battalion, has raided a handicraft shop in search of Rabindranath Tagore's Nobel Prize medal that was stolen from India in 2004.
"We have gathered some information that indicates that the medal is in Bangladesh. But we are not sure about it as yet," RAB's commanding officer Sultan Mohammad Nurani told BDNEWS24 in an interview on Tuesday.
On Monday night, RAB raided Rokhshana Pearls Handicrafts in capital Dhaka's posh Gulshan neighbourhood and arrested its owner Abul Hossain and two of his employees — one of them a woman.
Bangladeshi officials have now confirmed that they are looking for the two sons of Abul Hossain — Ali Hossain and Shiplu Hossain.
In 2004, the Nobel medal along with 43 other items had been stolen from Rabindra Bhavan in Santiniketan, about 225 km from Kolkata. Rabindra Bhavan is part of Visva Bharati University, which was founded by Tagore in 1921.
Tagore, who received the Nobel Prize in 1913 for literature for his work of verses Gitanjali, was the first non-Westerner to win the literature prize.
PTI adds: RAB commanding officer Wing Commander Sultan Mohammad Nurani said the raid was conducted after the police overheard a telephonic conversation, which indicated the presence of the medal in the shop.
He said the police team is interrogating the three suspects. "We are trying to gather the information about the whereabouts of the medal" of Tagore.
Nurani, however, said they were yet to be sure if the medal, stolen from Santiniketan three years ago, was in Bangladesh. Another RAB official said a manhunt has been laucnhed for two other suspects.
During the theft in 2004, Tagore's Nobel medal for literature and certificate as well as some personal possessions were taken from a locked glass showcase in the museum.
Sweden's Nobel Foundation, however, offered two replicas of the stolen Nobel medallion to Visva Bharati University in 2005.
The West Bengal government had handed over the case of the missing medallion to CBI, which later abandoned the search after two years of futile exercise.
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