CHENNAI : The Tamil Nadu government has taken a policy decision to entrust investigation of the idol theft cases in the State to the CBI, Additional Advocate-General (AAG) P H Aravindh Pandian told the Madras High Court on Wednesday.When writ petitions from advocate ‘Elephant’ G Rajendran and Rangarajan Narasimhan came up on Wednesday, Pandian told the special bench of Justices R Mahadevan and P D Audikesavalu that as the performance of the court appointed Commissioner IG (Idol Wing) AG Pon Manickavel was not up to the mark and he had not filed any report with regard to the progress made so far, the government has decided to transfer the matter to CBI.
The judge adjourned the matter to August 8 with a directive to the AAG to file a detailed affidavit in this regard.When petitioner Rajendran objected to the submission of the AAG, the bench said, “let the government pass the order first”. The issue pertains to a batch of pleas for a directive to the State to check idol thefts and take appropriate steps to recover the stolen ones.It may be noted that a major breakthrough in the idol smuggling was in 2012, when the alleged kingpin Subhash Kapoor was arrested at a German airport after a Red Corner Notice issued against him by the Interpol. Preliminary investigations revealed that Subash had bought idols from India and sold it to an art gallery in Australia.
Later, the Tamil Nadu government appointed Inspector-general of police Pon Manickavel as IGP of idol wing CID giving him ‘full additional charge’ to handle the unit. Last year, the Madras High Court directed State government to make Pon Manickavel, again in charge of the idol smuggling cases and also cases relating to appropriation of money in making idols to templesRecently, the team arrested two senior officials in the HR & CE department in connection with alleged swindling of gold when making statues. Last September an Assistant Commissioner of Police too was arrested by the idol wing team.
‘Manickavel not upto mark, didn’t file progress report’
AAG told the court that as the performance of the court-appointed Commissioner IG (Idol Wing) AG Pon Manickavel was not up to the mark and he had not filed any report with regard to the progress made so far, the government has decided to transfer the matter to CBI