Shivamogga: Burglars have decamped with the Padma Bhushan and Padma Vibhushan medals conferred on renowned Kannada poet late K V Puttappa after breaking into his memorial at Kuppalli in the district.

The thieves ransacked the showcases after snipping the CCTV links and fled with the medals kept in the ancestral home of Puttappa, the first Kannada writer to get Jnanpith in 1967, police said. The poet’s ancestral house has been converted into a memorial.