A gold-plated dagger gifted to Jawaharlal Nehru by the Saudi King in 1954 was recovered by the Delhi police on Thursday, three days after it was stolen from a museum in the city.
A gold-plated dagger gifted to Jawaharlal Nehru by the Saudi King in 1954 was recovered by the Delhi police on Thursday, three days after it was stolen from a museum in the city.
The police had registered a case of theft and house-breaking in connection with the matter and two persons — Ram Chander (32) and Sandeep Kumar (30) — both employed as housekeeping staff at the Nehru Memorial Museum and Library, have been arrested, The Delhi police said. The accused had committed the crime to pay the debt of Rs 25,000, said sources.
Special commissioner of police Taj Hasan said the arrests were made after an immediate action by a team of the crime branch. The dagger was recovered from the residence of one the relatives of Sandeep and handed over to the museum authorities.
The incident came to light on Monday, the day the museum is closed for general public, when the staff found a casket in the gift room of the museum broken and the dagger, stored inside it as an exhibit, missing.
A glass pane on the door leading to the gift room was also found broken. There were no CCTV cameras installed in or around the gift room due to which identity of the perpetrator could not be ascertained at first, a senior official said.
When the crime branch intervened into the matter on Wednesday and conducted an inspection of the gift room, they recreated the scene of crime and it emerged that the glass pane on the left side of the door was broken by the accused to open the latch, the official said.
Also the impact of the attack on the wooden frame of the shattered casket had an inclination from left to right, suggesting that the perpetrators were left-handed.
After questioning around a hundred staff members at the museum, the police zeroed in on housekeeping staff Ram Chander, who was ambidextrous. Chander could use his left hand with the same ease as his right one, the official said.
During interrogation, he broke down and confessed to have committed the crime along with his accomplice Kumar, joint commissioner of police (crime) Ravindra Yadav said.
