In a smart move reportedly aimed at discrediting the CBI which the Bengal Chief Minister often calls a “tool in Centre’s hands to subjugate the Opposition” the Mamata Banerjee Government is writing to the Central agency to return the Tagore Nobel theft case to the State for further
investigation, Secretariat sources said.
Banerjee had on Thursday offered to find Rabindranath Tagore’s Nobel medallion, “if the CBI fails to do it and hands the case back to us.” The medallion along with a number of artifacts was stolen from a museum at Shantiniketan in March 2004.
The CBI had on in 2007 and 2009 petitioned the court to close the case expressing its inability to drag the investigation further for lack of a definite lead. However Banerjee had requested the then Prime Minister Manmohan Singh to allow the CBI to continue with the search as it was an “emotional issue.”
The Bengal Chief Minister who was in Burdwan on Friday said the State had written to the Centre way back in December 2015 to transfer the case back to it so that the probes could be started afresh. “But there has been no reply from that end.”
The State is writing a fresh letter to the CBI to transfer to it the information it had gathered during the investigation so that it can restart the probe.
The move which was adequately publicised by the Chief Minister from Thursday onwards is smart, say insiders. “With no immediate issue in hand before the panchayat elections and the opposition left and Congress almost going into hibernation Banerjee is trying to single out the Centre and the CBI for attack.”
If the Centre refuses to transfer the case Banerjee would go to town blaming BJP and New Delhi for being “insensitive” towards an issue so close to the Bengali heart. And if it transfers the case then she will tell the voters about the incompetence of CBI which is only “a tool in centre’s hand to arm-twist the Opposition parties.”
This strategy could come in handy in the run up to 2019 elections when she would need to go in an all out war against the NDA, insiders say.