Chennai:
The Tamil Nadu Police statue Wing has stopped an ancient auction at the European Fine Arts Exhibition in the Netherlands. The dating statue for the 11th or 12th century, fifteen years ago, was stolen from the Arulmigu Agneshwaswams temple in Nagapattinam, told to NDTV.
At that time the leads were rare, but the Tamil Nadu police placed their heads down, followed the clues, and torn the case, and now tracked the statue’s hideout.
While working on the input of the police, the Dutch Ministry and the Local Police Ministry detained Kannappa Nayar Murthy in March. Legal procedures are going on to recover the idol.
“We guess that this is a value between 6 and 8 crores and will be more known after being detained,” the idol wing along with Additional Director General Kalapana Nayak told NDTV.
On the challenges in recovering the idol, he said, “It was difficult to find out that it had been 15 years of theft. But we worked quickly when we came to know that it was in the Netherlands.”
In the last few years, Ms. Nayak and her colleagues have recovered 374 idols – 36 made of metal, 265 stones, and 73 wood.
The idol shows Kannapa Nayanar – a devotee of Lord Shiva – standing on a chair and placing his right hand on the head. There is complex carving throughout the body.
According to legend, Nayar was now born in Andhra Pradesh. A hunter by profession, he became dedicated to Shiva when he received a representation of God in the forest.
He started offering meat and water to the representation, or Lingam.
Legend says that he once found it ‘bleeding’ and cut his eye and offered him Lingam. When its other eye started bleeding, he was about to cut his other and present it.
With his devotion, Shiva restored his vision.
The Lingam he found is worshiped in a temple in Andhra.
With input of Dathi Joseph
