Kolkata: After burglary at Nobel laureate Kailash Satyarthi’s Delhi home on Tuesday, the Kolkata Police are concerned about how safe Mother Teresa’s Nobel medallion is and plan to step up security for it.
Archbishop of Kolkata Thomas D’Souza will shortly hold a meeting on the medallion, currently in custody of the Missionaries of Charity.
Mother Teresa was awarded Nobel Peace Prize in 1979 for her constructive efforts to eradicate hunger and poverty and ensure a safer and better world for mankind.
After Mother Teresa’s canonization, the Missionaries of Charity held an exhibition of the Nobel medallion in the city between September 25 and October 3.
Now, following the burglary of Satyarthi’s Nobel citation, Fr D’souza said he would discuss with the authorities if Mother’s medallion could be shifted to a place where it could be under constant vigil.”We need to take preventive measures. We will review the medallion’s security ,” he said.
The state also wanted to keep Mother’s medallion in a museum for which they had been seeking the Missionaries’s nod, a Nabanna official said. “Else we will deploy armed guards inside the room and set up CCTV cameras,” he added.
The security at Mother House, headquarters of Missionaries of Charity , was increased immediately after the arrest of IS suspect Muhhamad Mosiuddin alias Musa in July last year, as he claimed there were plans to attack Mother House. But the tight vigilance is no longer in place.
Tagore’s Nobel medallion went missing from Santiniketan in March 2004. The next year, the Nobel Foundation handed over two replicas to Visva Bharati. Determined to bring back the original medallion, chief minister Mamata Banerjee in August 2016 announced the reopening of the case. She gave police chief Rajeev Kumar the additional charge as officer on special duty (CID) to probe it. Kumar has identified the thieves who have reportedly crossed over to Bangladesh.
(Source: The Times of India)