Tagore Nobel medal theft: CBI probe closed

The five-year-old probe by the Central Bureau of Investigation into the theft of Rabindranath Tagore's Nobel medal and other memorabilia from Rabindra Bhavan museum in Santiniketan, has been officially closed.

ACJM, Bolpur, T N Bhakat accepted the petition of the CBI on Thursday to close the investigation. The court's move comes after superintendent of police, special crime branch, CBI, Kolkata wrote to the court on August 20, 2009, "We are not progressing with the probe".

The theft of the medallion and 47 other pieces of memorabilia came to light on March 25, 2004. Five days later, the CBI started an investigation.

But after three years of fruitless probe, the agency closed the case on August 30, 2007, only to reopen it on September 18, 2008.

Incidentally, on several occasions reports surfaced that the medallion had been smuggled to Bangladesh but no concrete proof could be obtained on this.

The Nobel Foundation replaced the original medal, which the bard from West Bengal had won in 1913, with a replica in gold in December 2004, the year it was stolen.