The Idol Wing CID has made a major seizure of six antique idols worth crores of rupees from a metal statue shop in Kumbakonam on Tuesday. The six idols were to be illegally sold to a company in South Africa.
A senior official said DGP K. Jayanth Murali formed a special team, headed by Deputy Superintendent of Police Kathiravan, to probe into reports that several antique idols were being kept hidden in a showroom located at Thiruvalanjuli of Kumbakonam, Thanjavur district.
The DGP was tipped off about the antique idols planned to be shipped to South Africa to a company named Sisonke Events located in Durban.
The special team got an urgent search warrant from the judicial magistrate and raided the shop. During the search operation, the police officials identified six antique idols for which the owner of the shop had no valid documents or could not explain their origin.
The special team seized the six antique idols of Krishna, Vinayagar with Thiruvachi, Thirukadaiyur Nataraja, Sivagami Amman, Arthanareeswarar and Vallabhi Ganapathy with amman statues from the shop.
The Idol Wing police filed a case and on investigation found that the owner of the shop Ramalingam did not possess documentation for possessing the antique idols except for a rejected application submitted to the Archaeological Survey of India (ASI) seeking clearance for “exporting” the idols to a foreign country in 2015.
The Idol Wing CID secured the accused Ramalingam and are investigating to find out the temple from where the idols could have been stolen, those involved in the theft and the antiquity of the idols. The accused was produced before a judicial magistrate and sent to prison on Wednesday.
