‘Come up with roadmap to recover stolen idols, jewellery, artefacts’

The Madras High Court on Wednesday directed the Commissioner, Hindu Religious and Charitable Endowments (HR&CE) Department to coordinate with the State authorities and are available up with a roadmap to recover historical idols, jewelry and different artefacts reportedly lacking from a number of temples within the State.

Chief Justice Sanjib Banerjee and Justice Senthilkumar Ramamoorthy ordered that an affidavit needs to be filed within the court docket inside two weeks indicating the steps proposed to be taken by the division. The interim order was handed on a public curiosity litigation petition filed by R. Venkataraman of Nesapakkam, Chennai.

During the course of arguments, the judges concurred with the petitioner that nationwide treasures couldn’t be allowed to be looted and smuggled overseas. They directed the HR&CE Commissioner to find the temples from the place idols, jewels and historical artefacts had been lacking and take acceptable motion to retrieve them.

The petitioner submitted that the HR&CE division had commenced a mega train in November 2020 for making a database with respect to 42,155 temples beneath its management for submitting a report within the court docket in reply to a suo motu public curiosity litigation petition taken up in 2015 for preserving the heritage temples.

During such train, a number of the temples had been discovered ‘missing’ and a few had been in very dangerous situation with out even the Moolavar (presiding deity). He additionally claimed that a number of the temples had been visited by the HR&CE officers for the primary time in final 60 years. In few different temples, the registers relating to their movable and immovable properties had been lacking.

Accusing the officers of getting failed to lodge police complaints on this regard, he claimed that the officers, as a substitute, started getting ready new registers reflecting the current situation of the temples. The litigant additionally alleged that copies of the unique grasp registers of some temples had been lacking even from the workplace of the HR&CE Commissioner.