The mystery of Queen Victoria's disappearance at Mumbai's Chhatrapati Shivaji Railway Terminus

Without a doubt the Chhatrapati Shivaji Terminus (CST), formerly known as Victoria Terminus Station, is one Mumbai's most iconic buildings and an outstanding example of Victorian Gothic Revival architecture in India. Inscribed as a world heritage site in 2004, CST continues to serve as a key transportation hub for Mumbai, with three million commuters passing through its doors daily!

While the terminus featured most recently in international news headlines in 2008 when it was the site of a bloody attack in which gunmen killed 58 people and injured more than 100, a new intrigue is playing out at the CST this week as the disappearance of a

a new (if much lesser) indignity has been visited on the CST with the coming to light of the mysterious disappearance of the station's imposing statue of Queen Victoria.

While the statue had been relocated from the CST in the 1950s as part of a national campaign to rid the country of its colonial vestiges, it was being kept in the grounds of a nearby zoo until it vanished without a trace, and railway officials contacted by the Indian Express newspaper are reportedly "clueless", not only as to the statue's whereabouts but even when it was taken.

Historians and conservationists are understandably worried, and it is widely assumed that the statue has been spirited away and sold.