special police team seized a panchaloha statue of Lord Vinayaka near Kanyakumari on Tuesday night and arrested three persons.
Acting on a tip-off,Kanyakumari district police blocked all the roads leading to Kanyakumari from Thiruvananthapuram. The special team intercepted a speeding car near Kanyakumari and found the 1.5-foot-tall panchaloha statue, weighing around 5.5 kg, concealed in the car. Questioning of the occupants of the car revealed that they were smuggling the statue to Kanyakumari to hand it over to a person in Asaripallam in Nagercoil.
The statue was handed over to the officials of the Government Museum in Kanyakumari. Museum officials said that the statue might be 600 years old.
The arrested were identified as Kannan (30) of Vallakkadavu Muttakkarai, Biju of Karakonam, and Prabhakaran (48) of Kanjiramparai in Kerala.
They were smuggling it to Kanyakumari to hand it over to a person in Asaripallam in Nagercoil
