Idol Wing receives idols from London

Antique bronze idols of Lord Rama, Sita and Lakshmana, stolen from a temple in Nagapattinam within the Nineteen Seventies and recovered from a non-public collector in London in September, had been handed over to the Idol Wing of the Tamil Nadu police by Union Minister of Culture and Tourism Prahlad Singh Patel in New Delhi on Wednesday.

Abhay Kumar Singh, Additional Director-General of Police, Idol Wing CID, obtained the idols, which shall be handed over to the temple at Anandamangalam.

NGO’s efforts

The investigation into the theft of idols was taken up after India Pride Project, a gaggle of artwork lovers that makes use of social media to determine stolen artefacts from Indian temples, alerted the High Commission of India in London. The NGO mentioned the idols of Lord Rama, Sita, Lakshmana and Hanuman had been stolen from the Rajagopalaswamy Temple (constructed in the course of the Vijayanagara interval) and smuggled to the U.K.

Photo-documentation of the sculptures was accomplished on the temple in June 1958, and the idols had been suspected to be stolen later.

Once the idols had been verified with the related information, the High Commission took up the matter with the Art and Antiques Unit of the Metropolitan Police Service, London, in addition to the Idol Wing of the Tamil Nadu police. The Idol Wing despatched a complete report, confirming that the theft had taken place on November 23-24, 1978, on the temple, and a few criminals had been additionally caught. Based on the picture, the idols had been examined and so they had been discovered to be the identical ones that had been stolen from the temple.

An in depth report was despatched to the High Commission after correct verification, Mr. Singh mentioned, thanking the authorities for his or her steps to get better the idols.

The Art and Antiques Unit of the Metropolitan Police Service investigated the matter. Based on the data and paperwork handed in, it contacted the proprietor of the idols and conveyed the High Commission’s request for his or her return. The collector had purchased these idols from an unknown supplier; therefore, no prosecution was initiated. Subsequently, Metropolitan Police Service handed over these idols to the High Commission. The bronze idols of Rama and Lakshmana and Sita are the masterpieces of the Indian metallic artwork. They are 90.5 cm, 78 cm and 74.5 cm in top respectively. Stylistically, they’re datable to the thirteenth century AD. The complete rely of antiquities recovered from overseas nations stands at 53, of which 40 have been introduced again since 2014.

S. Vijay Kumar, founding father of India Pride, mentioned, “This case underscores the urgent need to reopen all closed cases of idol theft that have not been followed up because of the stated reason that the idols were untraceable since the 1950s. If the police and the HR&CE Department can help with even the basic details of such antiquities, we are sure we can track many more such stolen idols.”