22 precious antique idols stolen from 800-year-old Odisha temple

Bhubaneshwar, Dec 24: Unidentified miscreants broke open the lock of the ancient temple and stole 22 antique idols of various gods and goddesses on Monday, police said. The idols were stolen from a13th century Daksha Prajapati Temple in Banpur town of Khurda district in Odisha. The miscreants barged into the sanctum sanctorum by breaking the locks of the three doors and fled with the booty worth crores of rupees.

The stolen idols included Maa Kanaka Durga, Gopinath Dev, Kaliyugeswar Dev and Chandrasekhar Dev. Some of these idols were made of ‘asthdhatu’ i.e. an alloy of gold, silver, copper, zinc, lead, tin, iron and mercury.

According to the reports, when the priest entered the temple early morning he was astonished to see the locks of the main door and two other doors leading to sanctum sanctorum broken and 22 of the 31 idols were missing. He immediately informed the temple committee members of the theft and they in turn called the Banpur police.

Banpur IIC Sanjay Patnailk reached the spot with his team without wasting time and initiated investigations. The case is being probed by SI Bijay Mallik, Raj Kishor Behera, ASI Basant Patnaik, Namita Nayak and other police officers.

This 800-year-old temple was under the Archaeological Survey of India’s (ASI) supervision. The members of the ASI also reached the spot to take the stock of the situation as soon as the news of the theft went viral in public domain.

Tarinisen Pradhan, the ASI official on duty said: “I was on duty on Monday. I locked the temple doors and main gate at around 8 pm last night before leaving for home. When I came to the temple this morning, I found the doors of the temple opened. I immediately passed on the message to our higher ups.”

Adding that as many as 31 ancient idols were there in the temple and 22 were stolen, Pradhan said, “We have registered a complaint with the police in this regard. Police have reached the spot and launched an investigation”.

This incident of theft is said to be the third such incident which has happened in the same temple premises.

The Indian National Trust for Art and Cultural Heritage’s (INTACH) state project coordinator and historian Anil Dhir, who earlier this year published a report on the ‘Antiquities of the Prachi Valley’, said more than 300 valuable idols were found missing in different places of the state. He said idols which had been photographed and documented by scholars in the last three decades have vanished.

Dhir reported that nearly 48 FIRs had been filed in different police stations of the Prachi valley area in the last decade, but only one recovery has been made.

Last year, two ‘Asthadhatu’ images dating back to the 11th Century were recovered by the Crime Branch from the outskirts of Bhubaneswar. The decoy used by the police was asked to pay Rs 2.5 crore for them.

According to the OpIndia report the State convener of INTACH, Amiya Bhusan Tripathy said the prevailing laws are ineffective to prevent idol thefts and burglary and opined that a holistic National Heritage Protection Policy and system should be put in place to put an end to these thefts.

There is no true objective database for all the antiques, both stone and metallic idols, in about 22,000 ancient places of worship in Odisha. It is true that more than 95% of the antique idols in these temples remain legally unregistered as the National Mission on Monuments and Antiquities remains incomplete, confirmed Tripathy, opining that new legislations and amendments are the pressing needs of the hour.