A gold-plated dagger gifted to Jawaharlal Nehru by the Saudi King in 1954 was today recovered by Delhi Police, three days after it was stolen from a prominent museum in the national capital.
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 here, have been arrested, Delhi Police chief spokesperson Taj Hassan said.
The 26-centimetre-long dagger has been recovered 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.
The museum authorities called up police and conducted a thorough check of the premises and later the case was registered at Chanakyapuri Police Station in New Delhi.
When the Crime Branch of Delhi Police intervened into the matter yesterday 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, 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.
A raid was conducted in the wee hours today, which led to the arrest of Kumar from Moti Bagh area and the dagger was recovered, a senior official said.
"The gold-plated dagger was gifted to Nehru by the Saudi King in 1954. The dagger was stored as an exhibit at the gift room, close to the former Prime Minister's bedroom, where he breathed his last 10 years later," he said.
Housekeeping staff and security personnel deployed at the museum are directly employed with a private enterprise, entrusted with duties of security, maintenance and upkeep, police said.
While Ram Chander was working in the museum since 2008, Kumar was employed there in 2010. Both have no past record in crime, the official added.
