Trinamool Congress behind Gurudev's Nobel medal theft: BJP leader

Kolkata, May 9 On the 161st birth anniversary of Gurudev Rabindranath Tagore on Monday, senior BJP leader and the former party national secretary and state president Rahul Sinha alleged that West Bengal's ruling party Trinamool Congress is behind the theft of Nobel medal of Gurudev.

He also alleged that the state government had not cooperated with the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) sleuths probing the medal theft. "Recently, Trinamool Congress, in the party mouthpiece, has questioned the CBI capability in tracking the Nobel medal.. The state government has, since the beginning, created hurdles for the CBI team probing the theft. This is the general practice of the state government and the ruling party to create obstacles for central agencies in carrying out any independent probe," Sinha told newspersons on Monday.

Sinha also attacked the West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee on this issue. "The chief minister once claimed that if CBI is unable, the state police will track where the medal is. She is welcome to do that. Actually, Trinamool Congress has connections with theft. The ruling party in the state is involved in all sorts of illegal activities."

Rubbishing Sinha's claims, Trinamool Congress state general secretary and party spokesman Kunal Ghosh said: "He might have forgotten that when the Nobel medal theft took place or when CBI took over the probe, then Trinamool Congress was not in power. If the state government had not cooperated with the central agency, then why did not the latter inform the court, Ghosh asked.

Gurudev received the Nobel Prize way back in 1913. On March 25, 2004, the Nobel medal was found stolen from Gurudev-founded Visva-Bharati University at Bolpur- Santiniketan in Birbhum district of West Bengal. The-then West Bengal chief minister and Mamata Banerjee's predecessor, Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee promptly handed over the case to CBI, which closed the case permanently in 2009 because of lack of leads in the probe.

In 2017, Mamata Banerjee demanded that the CBI handover its findings to the state police, which will start a fresh investigation in the matter. However, the Department of Personnel & Training (DoPT), the cadre-controlling authority of CBI, informed the state home department that the central probe agency had refused to handover the case to the state police.

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