A daring robbery was executed at the Bronze Gallery in the Government Museum in Egmore on Thursday night, with the thieves reportedly taking away “priceless” replicas from a Mughal era numismatics display, and other ancient artefacts, according to police sources.
The police suspected that one of the thieves might have entered as a visitor on Thursday evening and hidden himself inside the gallery, only to let in his accomplice later. The incident came to light around 9 a.m. on Saturday when the gallery was opened.
Friday was a holiday for the museum.
The Bronze Gallery, a two-storey building, located behind the Connemara Library, according to experts, is home to some of the rarest and ancient Vaishnavite, Saivite, Buddhist and Jain idols sourced from various parts of the country. A display of numismatics is on now.
“We have a blurred footage from a CCTV camera placed outside the gallery of a man smashing a window on the top floor from inside late Thursday night, and another man climbing through the window from a nearby tree,” an investigating officer said.
The men broke locks on the first and second floors of the gallery and rifled through the coin collection, goddess idols and three almirahs containing bronze idols, he added. They supposedly made their getaway with “Jahangir coins,” and other valuable artefacts by scaling down the tree, police sources said.
Two armed police personnel are on duty on shifts round the clock. Museum officials who refused to speak to the media reportedly claimed that only replicas of Mughal coins were missing. However, they added that an enumeration of items displayed at the Bronze Gallery was under way.
