PUDUCHERRY: The Tamil Nadu police on Wednesday seized 11 idols depicting Hindu gods, worth crores of rupees in the global market from a French national’s house in Colas Nagar in Puducherry. Following the arrest of Pushparaj, an accomplice of idol smuggler G Deenadayalan (86), a team led by A G Pon Manickavel, Inspector General of Police (IG), Idol Wing, reached Puducherry based on Deenadayalan’s confession and raided a house after getting approval from the Puducherry district court.
Police seized five Nataraja idols and idols of Parvathi, Chandrasekar Sivan, Mahisasura Mardhini, wedding pose of Shiva and Parvathi, Amman and Somaskandar. The idols are being taken to Chennai to produce it before the Chennai District Magistrate. “The police have learned that these idols were stolen from temples in Melpadi, an ancient town in Vellore district,” said Manickavel and added that a similar Nataraja statue was earlier sold at a cost of `31 crore in Australia.
According to sources, experts would be called in to determine the accurate age and worth of the idols. Sources also said that some of the idols are expected to be dated to the Chola era (10th to 12th centuries AD). Ranjith Kumar (36), an associate of Pushparaj, who is a carpenter by profession, was also arrested on Tuesday, following the arrest of Pushparaj in Chennai on Monday. Kumar was arrested near the new bus stand in Puducherry when he was waiting for one of his customers to sell an idol.
The three-storey building was owned by a French national, Perumal, who passed away about a year ago with his children settled in France, one of whom is Vanila Rajaratnam. They have been renting the second and third floor to an import and export company. The private company, according to a source, used the higher floors to smuggle idols.
Meanwhile, Gokul Krishna Yadva, a practising lawyer in the Madras High Court, who claims to be the advocate of Vanila Rajaratnam, said that his client belongs to the Kondapa family and her grandfather who died 20 years ago, had purchased several idols from various places including Chidambaram during the French rule.