Cops hunt for stolen Lal Bahadur Shastri watch.

ANTIQUE thieves have made away with a piece of India's post-Independent history. Striking at the heart of the posh Lutyen's Delhi, unidentified persons have stolen a golden wristwatch from the Lal Bahadur Shastri Memorial. Shastri, the country's second Prime Minister, had received the watch as a gift from his Russian counterpart, Alexei Kosygin, during the historic Tashkent conference in 1966.

The police have hinted that scores of antique items displayed in the memorial, many of them priceless, may not be safe because of a lax security cover. The authorities of the memorial, located next to Sonia Gandhi's house, discovered the theft on September 3. But they seem to have wasted valuable time by trying to locate the watch all by themselves before approaching the police only on September 7.

Though policemen subsequently took fingerprints and other necessary forensic evidences from the site of the theft, they have not yet been able to zero in on the culprits. "We have registered a case, but the sad part is that the incident was reported several days after the theft took place. Moreover, the memorial does not have precautionary measures to keep the valuable articles safe. It seems even the caretaker was on leave the day the theft took place. We have taken all fingerprints and are investigating the matter," Shankar Das, the additional commissioner of police (New Delhi), said.

Kosygin had almost singlehandedly mediated the Tashkent Declaration which officially ended the 1965 Indo-Pak war. During the Cold War days, Kosygin was a tall Russian leader, next only in importance to President Leonid Brezhnev.

Under pressure from the United Nations, Shastri as the Prime Minister had to accept the mediation from the Soviet Union. He signed the declaration on January 10, 1966, with Pakistani President Ayub Khan in the presence of Kosygin.

The next day, Shastri, who had suffered two heart attacks earlier, died supposedly of another cardiac arrest.

In his complaint to the Tughlak Road police station, Professor A. K. Das, director of the memorial, stated that he and his staff had conducted an independent inquiry into the incident but had not been able to find the watch.

After having searched the entire premises in vain, Das reported the matter to the New Delhi police. The police lodged an FIR ( number 110) under Section 380 ( theft) of the IPC. The memorial is closed every Tuesday and hence, neither Das nor any of his officials was present there. In fact, there seemed to be no one on the premises save a guard manning the main gate.

Attempts to contact Das over the phone were unsuccessful.

Though Pawan Bhatt, one of the employees, was called up, he refused to comment on the theft, saying " no one is available at the moment". The disappearance of the golden watch -- an important gift symbolic of the Indo- Soviet friendship -- betrays the fact that museums and memorials in the country are extremely vulnerable to antique thieves.

The latest theft has similarities with the disappearance of a pistol from the National Museum.

The pistol was believed to have belonged to General Niazi and was an important relic of the Indo- Pak war in 1971. Pakistan's Niazi had handed over the pistol to Lt- Gen J. S. Aurora of India after the Pakistani forces surrendered before the Indian Army in the then East Pakistan.

However, the case took a curious turn when some army officers later claimed that Niazi's pistol was safe with it and the stolen pistol belonged to someone else.

Rabindranath Tagore's Nobel medallion was stolen from the campus of Visva Bharati University in another embarrassing theft that took place some years ago The CBI failed to locate it and recently filed a closure report of the case in a court.

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