Delhi Police recover Nobel replica, three held

New Delhi: Three siblings have been arrested in connection with the theft of the Nobel replica and other valuables from child rights activist Kailash Satyarthi’s southeast Delhi’s residence on Sunday.

The police has recovered the Nobel replica in addition to the other stolen items, but the citation hasn’t been recovered yet.

The three accused brothers, Rajan alias Natta (25), Vinod (35), and Sunil (28), have had previous involvement in burglary and robbery cases in southeast district.

While expressing hope that the citation will be recovered too, Nobel laureate Kailash Satyarthi thanked the Delhi police for the “brilliant and speedy recovery” of the stolen items. Delhi police commissioner Amulya Patnaik also tweeted about the case being solved.

“Was greatly concerned about theft of Shri Satyarthi’s prestigious Nobel Medal replica. Proud that @DelhiPolice recovered it in quick time,” he tweeted.

Citing the theft of Rabindranath Tagore’s Nobel Prize medal in 2004 from Visva Bharati University’s museum in Santiniketan, the joint commissioner of police (Southeast), R.P. Upadhyay, said that the theft of Mr Satyarthi’s Nobel replica was a “very important case” for the Delhi police. “For us, it was a case of national pride. Ten teams were working on the case,” he added.

In the CCTV footage that was recovered, two faces were muffled and one face was hazy and despite developing them, the police didn’t have a clear picture of the accused. Apart from technical surveillance, cops were focused on record-based surveillance.

A list of suspects and bad characters of the locality was prepared during this exercise. The police team came to know that Rajan had changed three houses in Sangam Vihar in the last one week, which further strengthened the suspicion on him. They also learnt that the three accused used to go to Ghaziabad at night to sleep.

Raids were conducted at different places and Rajan was apprehended from Sangam Vihar. He further disclosed that he had committed the burglaries in Aravali Apartments along with his two brothers, Vinod alias Pinki and Sunil alias Sonu. The Nobel Prize replica, along with other articles, was recovered from their residence.

During interrogation they told the police that when they had carried out the burglary, they didn’t realise the value of the replica of the Nobel Prize but after watching it on TV, they realised it. Therefore, they couldn’t dispose it off.

The accused brothers are natives of Gorakhpur in Uttar Pradesh and had been living in the jhuggis near the Aravali Apartments since their birth. The jhuggis were removed in the year 2005-06 and they, along with their family, shifted to Sangam Vihar.

But they continued working in the same locality as labourers or painters. Hence they were well aware of the topography of the area and they decided to commit the burglary in the same area.

The child rights activist won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2014. He shared the prize with Pakistan’s Malala Yousafzai.

Mr Satyarthi had presented his Nobel Peace Prize medal to President Pranav Mukherjee in January 2015. The original medal has been preserved and is now on display at the Rashtrapati Bhavan Museum.