Hanuman Murti Stolen from Tamilnadu Temple Brought Back
- In History & Culture
- 07:00 PM, Feb 22, 2022
- Vijay Kumar
A 500 year old Hanuman murti stolen from a Tamilnadu temple, auctioned at Christie’s in New York and acquired by a person in Australia was returned to India by Australian authorities on Tuesday.
This was a tough case. I was searching for another Hanuman and chanced on the Pottaveli Hanuman murti in the IFP (French Institute of Pondicherry) archives. It was vaguely familiar and realised that he had been auctioned by Christie's New York.
I immediately reached out to the law enforcement in the US while working with the idol wing.
I was shocked to learn that the theft happened in 2013 (two years after Subhash Kapoor was arrested) in the same Ariyalur belt and the local police station had closed the FIR as untraceable within 12 months. This is something that has to stop as police stations are graded by open FIRs and to show good performance, they close cases hampering proper investigation.
Luckily a diligent officer with Australian Home Land Security managed to act on it and the buyer was identified and the restitution has happened.
Sadly, three more bronzes namely Vishnu with consorts stolen during the same theft are still missing and we hope to track them soon as well.
The state and centre must take a lesson from this and ensure reopening of all such closed FIRs for idol thefts at least now and work with us to bring home stolen idols.
All the images are provided by the author.
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