Santiniketan: Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee, concerned at the theft of Rabindranath Tagore's Nobel Prize medal and memorabilia, reached Santiniketan for a brief visit today (Apr 2, 2004).

Immediately after arriving, the Prime Minister and the Acharya (chancellor) of Visva Bharati University, drove straight to Uttarayan, which houses the museum, where the March 25 burglary took place.

Vajpayee, who was accompanied by Governor Viren J Shah and Union Ministers Mamata Banerjee and Tapan Sikdar, was received at the helipad by Visva-Bharati vice-chancellor Sujit Basu and West Bengal Minister Dhiren Sen, the representative of the State Government.

A tight security cordon was thrown around the makeshift helipad at Melarmath, where a high fence has been erected.

The Prime Minister's convoy headed towards the Uttarayan complex on a tree-lined road from the helipad with the entire Uttarayan complex sealed off.

Vajpayee will visit the Rabindra Bhavan museum, the scene of the crime, and also hold a half-an-hour one-to-one meet with vice-chancellor Sujit Kumar Basu.

He will spend the entire part of his brief three-hour stay in Santiniketan at the Uttarayan complex, which houses the museum.

He would lunch and rest awhile at the guesthouse in the complex before taking off for Kolkata at 16.10 hrs (IST).

This would be Vajpayee's second visit to the sylvan surroundings of Santiniketan after taking over as its chancellor in January 2001.

His first visit was to attend the convocation on December 15, 2001, two days after the terrorist strike in Parliament.