[MSN] India. New insurer for Tagore memorabilia after Nobel medal theft

[MSN]

New insurer for Tagore memorabilia after Nobel medal theft
By our correspondent
12 March 2008

KOLKATA — Visva Bharati university has appointed a new insurer for Nobel laureate Rabindranath Tagore's memorabilia after their bitter experience with National Insurance Company (NIC) following the theft of the Nobel Prize Medal four years ago.

NIC, which bagged the high-profile account in 1983, has made way for New India Assurance (NIA) at less than one-third of the cost, according to media reports. NIA's premium quotation was the lowest at tenders opened last week compared to NIC and Oriental Insurance Company which had also thrown its hat into the ring.

NIA is charging only about Rs20,000 compared to NIC's fat premium of Rs68,000. The sum assured is Rs24 million for protection against burglary and fire. Durgadas Banerjee, manager of NIA branch in Bolpur, sad: "We are very proud to win Tagore's account. We do not treat it like any other business deal. It involves prestige and honour."

More than the premium, it was the bitter dispute between Visva Bharati and NIC over settlement of the insurance claim for the Nobel medal which vanished in 2004 that forced university authorities to float a tender which NIA won hands down.

The university claimed Rs16 million but NIC offered to pay only Rs9.5 million. According to NIC, the medallion and the Nobel citation were insured for Rs16 million but only the medallion is lost. So the university would have been entitled to Rs16 million if the citation too was lost. But the citation was left behind while the medal went missing.

Several rounds of negotiations between Visva Bharati director Swapan Majumder and NIC top brass has failed to break the insurance claim deadlock.

Officials involved in the negotiations said the Nobel medal and citation were insured at NIC's Suri branch.

On March 25, 2004, robbers broke open steel almirahs in the Visva Bharati university museum to steal Tagore's Nobel medal, gold bangles and a sari of the poet‚s wife Mrinalini Devi, a ring belonging to his father Devendranath Tagore, silver utensils, rare paintings and ivory articles. Fortunately they left the Nobel citation behind.

The Nobel Prize was awarded to Tagore in 1913 for his book of poems entitled Gitanjali making him the first non-Westerner to bag the Literature prize. Eight years later, he set up Visva Bharati university in Shantiniketan, 225km from Kolkata, to propagate his educational goals in a serene atmosphere. He died in 1941.

The 2004 theft sparked off national outrage and condemnation. After the Criminal Investigation Department (CID) of West Bengal police drew a blank, the case was handed over to CBI. The CBI spent millions of rupees but there was no breakthrough.

Last year the agency formally admitted that it had reached a dead-end and announced that it would investigate no further. Recently Bangladesh's anti-crime Rapid Action Battalion (RAB) personnel raided a handicrafts shop in Dhaka’s upmarket Gulshan district and arrested two persons who were apparently overheard haggling over Tagore’s stolen Nobel medal. But investigations reached a dead-end within days.

The termination of the CBI probe elicited a varied response. Somnath Chatterjee, Lok Sabha Speaker elected from Bolpur parliamentary constituency which includes Santiniketan, said that he was disgusted by the CBI’s shoddy handling of the sensitive case. But Trinamool Congress boss Mamata Banerjee smelt a rat and accused West Bengal‚s ruling communists of pressuring the federal government to wind up the CBI probe because the robbers had links with the red party.

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