Historic gold watch stolen from Delhi memorial
Wednesday, 9th September 2009 (5116 views)
A gold watch gifted to the third prime minister of India by his Russian equivalent has been stolen from a memorial in New Delhi.
The watch was taken from the Lal Bahadur Shastri Memorial in the city, with the theft being discovered last week.
It had been presented to Lal Bahadur Shastri by Alexei Kosygin during the 1966 Tashkent conference, which saw the creation of the Tashkent Declaration that ended the Indo-Pakistani War of 1965.
The watch was seen as a significant symbol of the relationship between India and Russia, according to local newspaper the Mail Today.
Police are searching for the culprit after taking fingerprints from the scene of the theft.
Shastri was prime minister of India from June 1964 to January 1966 and was a member of the Indian National Congress.
He was preceded in the role by Jawaharlal Nehru, who was in office from 1947 to 1964, and Gulzari Lal Nanda, who was prime minister for just two weeks during 1964.
