The Idol Wing-Criminal Investigation Department (CID) has informed the Madras High Court that 23 out of the 41 missing case diaries related to various idol theft cases booked across the State had been traced and sincere efforts were being made to trace the rest.
Justices M.M. Sundresh and R. Hemalatha were told that the 18 case diaries were missing from Tiruvallur (10), Cuddalore (4), Nagapattinam (2), Erode (1) and Thoothukudi (1) districts and searches were on at the police stations concerned, sub- divisional police offices and jurisdictional magistrate courts.
The complainants in those cases, temple authorities as well as respectable witnesses and Village Administrative Officers were also being inquired about the missing case diaries. Additional Director-General of Police Abhay Kumar Singh made the submission in response to a case filed by activist lawyer ‘Elephant’ G. Rajendran.
According to the ADGP, the State government had issued a Government Order in 1995 transferring only select idol theft cases to the Idol Wing-CID and ordered the rest to be probed by the local police. However, in July 2017, the High Court ordered the transfer of all idol theft cases from the local police to the Idol Wing-CID.
Subsequently, it was found that the case diaries of 41 cases were missing from the local police stations. Hence, those cases had been closed as undetected by the local police. Now that the case diaries of 23 cases had been traced, the Idol Wing-CID had nominated officers to verify the documents and the investigation done by the local police.
Listing the details, the ADGP said four of those cases had been closed in Nagapattinam district, three each in Tiruvannamalai and Ramanathapuram, two each in Tiruvallur, Salem, Dharmapuri and Tenkasi and one each in Perambalur, Theni, Namakkal, Krishnagiri and Cuddalore districts.
Most of these cases had been closed as undetected on different dates between July 1984 and April 2017. Despite the cases being closed, idols related to seven cases had been detected and handed over either to the temple concerned or kept in the custody of the judicial magistrate or the icon centre concerned, he added.
If the Idol Wing-CID happened to receive any further clues in these 41 cases, they would be reopened and reinvestigated, the official assured the court.
