Canadian biochemist Joseph Hulse, who received the Padma Shri at Rashtrapati Bhavan in New Delhi last week, has been mugged in Manchester where he had stopped on way home to attend a school anniversary dinner.
Hulse, 85, one of the world's leading experts in biotechnology, had withdrawn 2,000 pounds from a bank in Manchester's busy St Ann's Square when two men grabbed his jacket and fled with the cash.
Hulse, who was born in Manchester, was in the city to attend the 75th anniversary of his alma mater, the Audenshaw Grammar School.
A distraught Hulse told the local media that he went to St Ann's Church after withdrawing cash from the bank.
He had put the money in his jacket pocket in the bank. As he walked out of the church two men claimed he had something on his jacket that needed cleaning, pulled it from his back, threw it on the floor and ran off.
"When I picked it up the money had gone. I am still upset about what has happened. I am sure the men who robbed me were tipped off," Hulse said, adding I have never been robbed before. I am just so shocked that it happened in Manchester.
The Manchester police said they are investigating the mugging. After schooling and higher education in Britain, Hulse moved to Canada in 1952 where he became chairman of the anadian National Freedom From Hunger Campaign, which raised $50,000 to establish a training centre in India.
Hulse has devoted most of his life to tackling poverty around the world, especially in India which he has visited 68 times.
Hulse first visited India in 1962 to offer Canadian cooperation in the establishment of the International Food Technology Training Centre, Mysore.
In 2006, he was elected Fellow for Life of India's National Academy of Sciences, and is the only non-Indian to have received the Conservation of the Environment Award presented by Rotary Clubs and the Earthcare Society of India.
He is also a vsiting pofessor at the Central Food Technological Research Institute in Mysore and the M S Swaminathan Research Foundation in Tamil Nadu.
