Govt: 500-year-old stolen Hanuman idol to be repatriated to India soon

Union Culture Minister G Kishan Reddy tweeted on Wednesday: “Five hundred-year-old Lord Hanuman bronze idol stolen from Tamil Nadu temple, to be repatriated back to India. The stolen idol retrieved by US Homeland Security was handed over to @HCICanberra by US CDA.”

On Tuesday, it was returned to Indian High Commissioner Manpreet Vohra at Canberra by Australian Chargé d’Affaires Michael Goldman.

An official in the Archaeological Survey of India (ASI), which is the custodian of such artefacts till they are handed back to their state of origin, said: “This Anjaneyar (Hanuman) idol was burgled along with Sri Devi idol and Boodevi idol from the Varadharaja Perumal temple in Vellur village, Ariyalur, on April 9, 2012.”

Officials said that in March 2014, the idol was auctioned by Christie’s for $37,500 to a buyer in Australia. Upon discovery and subsequent investigation, it was found to be the same idol that was stolen from India. The Tamil Nadu Police’s Idol Wing was assisted in the case by US Homeland Security.

Sources said the auction house and the buyer in Australia were unaware that the idol was stolen.

The idol will be brought back to India within a month and handed over to the Idol Wing. It will be restored to the temple from where it was stolen, the ASI official added.

Another prominent artefact that went missing two decades ago, the idol of Avalokiteshvara Padmapani (Buddha) at the Devisthan Kundalpur temple in Bihar, was handed over to the Indian consulate in Milan. It is also likely to reach New Delhi within a month. The statue was created between the 8th and 12th centuries, and smuggled out of the country around the year 2000.

The 18th-century statue of Goddess Annapurna, stolen 100 years ago from Varanasi, was brought back from Ottawa, Canada, in October. It was installed at Kashi Vishwanath Temple in Varanasi a month later.

The government has retrieved around 212 artefacts, mainly statues and idols made of metal, stone, and terracotta, in the last seven years. According to the Ministry of Culture, most of them (including the 157 that were handed to Prime Minister Narendra Modi in New York last year) have come from the United States.