‘Hands of idols cut to make smuggling easy’

Chennai

After inspecting 13 stolen panchalokhas idols that were recovered before 12 years, the sleuths from the Idol wing have discovered that the left hands of Lord Nataraja and Goddess Sivakami idols were removed to make it easier to smuggle them to the US.

According to sources, former officers of the wing, inspector Jeevanantham, DSP Kadhar Basha and retired DSP Kasib, concealed these facts before the court and IG Pon Manickavel took the case up for re-investigation when the trial was almost over with only two witnesses accounts had to be recorded.

The Idol wing sleuths have also said that among the retrieved idols, only four were kept in the gallery called the Art of Past at Manhattan in New York, while the other five were illegally smuggled back to India through Bangkok, Nepal and Kolkata. They were kept in the Aparna Art Gallery in Chennai. The Nataraja was kept at the Manhattan gallery with a price tag of Rs 15 crore.

Experts from IIT-Madras, including professor Murugaiyan Amirthalingam, helped the idol wing confirm that the hands were chopped and replaced with a similar yet different composition of materials in the US. The hands were chopped to make it easier to transport them abroad, said sources. While Lord Nataraja’s left hand was chopped in Kattamakodadi village near Madurai, a replica of the hand was attached with the idol in London by an expert named Neel Perismith, said the idol wing sleuths. The same is suspected to have been done to the Sivakami idol as well. These two idols along with 11 other idols were stolen from Naarum Poonathar Temple in Tirunelveli.