The New Nation - Internet Edition

Staff Reporter

Members of an intelligence team in Bangladesh have reportedly picked up Indian national Jibon Singh, the main suspect of the theft case of Nobel Prize Medal of Poet Rabindranath Tagore.

"A person, probably Jibon Singh, was arrested from a nearby district of Dhaka on Monday," an intelligence official said on condition of anonymity yesterday.

It is yet to be confirmed that the arrested person is fugitive Jibon Singh, who is also a leader of Kamptapur Liberation Force (KLF) of West Bengal province of India, he said.

Intelligence agencies were hunting Jibon Singh since West Bengal CID sent letters to Bangladesh CID in December, 2007 for arrest and deportation of Singh, saying they had information about his presence in Bangladesh.

The CID arrested Jibon Singh's possible aide Mohammad Hossain Shiplu, son of Abul Hossain, a handicraft businessman on January 31, 2008.

A raid on Abul Hossain's shop at Gulsshan and his interrogation did not yield any clue about either the medal or Jibon Singh.

The medal, given along with the Nobel Prize for literature to Tagore, was stolen from a safe in Viswa Bharati University, Santiniketan in India's West Bengal.