Chennai: Sleuths from the Idol Wing CID arm of State’s Economic Offences Wing (EOW), on Monday, had arrested a Nepalese father-son duo running an art gallery in Mumbai as their front to allegedly smuggling stolen idols out of country.
They were arrested in connection with the idol heist reported at Narambunathaswamy temple in Palavoor reported in 2005. With their arrest, the Idol Wing sleuths believe they are getting closer to the entire smuggling racket links in the international blackmarket.
The arrested were identified as Valabha Prakash (68) and his son Aditya Prakash (32), hailing from Nepal the family had relocated to Mumbai and were running Indo-Nepal Art gallery.
Preliminary investigations revealed they were into dealing ancient idols from South India selling them to international art galleries for over a decade, besides playing sales channel for notorious idol smuggler Deenadayalan.
A.G. Pon Manickavel, Inspector General of Police (IG), Idol Wing, who led the team, on arriving at the Chennai Airport late on Monday night, told the media that the duo was arrested in Palavoor temple case which is under trial at a court in Srivilliputhur.
The duo was later produced before the jurisdictional court, and were remanded to Judicial Custody. The duo was part of the network that stolen and tried to smuggle out 13 metal idols including one Nataraja idol valued around Rs 15 crore.
The gang believed to have stolen the idols on the night of June 18, 2005, after entering the 6th century Narambunathaswamy temple after entering the temple as devotees. They hid themselves inside the temple till midnight and later escaped with 13 idols.
A year later the idol wing cops, who were investigating the case, arrested Arunachalam and Shajahan and recovered 5 idols from them in Madurai. Months later in May 2007, the police arrested two more suspects named Saudi Murugan and Balaji.
The gang earlier told the police that they committed the theft believing that all the idols were made of gold and they could not find any gold inside the idols after some were cut into pieces.
By this time Deenadayalan had purchased some idols and police recovered 4 idols from his shop in July 2007. They had negotiated with a foreign buyer to sell the Nataraja idol for Rs 15 crore.
