The police have launched a massive manhunt to look for burglars who dared to break into the ancestral home of Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel, now housing the national memorial of the Iron Man of India and his brother, Vithhalbhai Patel, at Karamsad in Anand district in central Gujarat.
However, both the police and the trustees of the Sardar Patel memorial said none of the precious materials and personal belongings of the country's first Deputy Prime Minister kept in the memorial, including the “Bharat Ratna” award conferred on him posthumously in 1991, had been stolen. What the burglars could lay their hands on were only a digital camera, valued at over Rs. 24,000, Rs. 10,000 kept in a locker and Rs 1,300 from a donation box. The locker in which the Bharat Ratna award had been kept had been left untouched by the burglars.
‘Handiwork of small-time thieves'
The police believed that it could be the handiwork of some small-time thieves who were just interested in money and had little knowledge of the value of the articles kept in the memorial. Two security guards posted at the memorial were being questioned but the police believed that the burglars could have entered the memorial by jumping the back wall that separate the memorial from the open farms in the vicinity.
The trustees came to know about the burglary when they noticed a damaged donation box lying in a garden adjacent to the memorial building. The burglars also damaged some office furniture but “all precious belongings of the Sardar are safe,” the memorial administrator, Ramesh Prajapati, said.
Other valuable artifacts
Besides the Bharat Ratna award, other valuable artifacts the memorial housed included a tea set gifted to the Sardar by Lord Mountbatten, a “charkha” (spinning wheel) used by him and the “shawl” that the Sardar wore when he signed the final draft of the constitution of India. Most of the artifacts held by the immediate family of the Sardar were later donated to the memorial trust for public viewing.
The memorial was inaugurated by the former Prime Minister, Atal Behari Vajpayee, in 2000 while the Bharat Ratna award, which was in possession of the Sardar's late grandson, Bipin Patel, was handed over to the trust in 2003 by the then Deputy Prime Minister, L. K. Advani, and the Gujarat Chief Minister, Narendra Modi, at a ceremony held at Karamsad.
The police said dog squad, finger print expert and officials of the Forensic Science Laboratory jointly with the local police and senior officials drawn from other areas were jointly investigating the burglary.
