Initially, the Idol Wing of Tamil Nadu police intended to create a legal ground for retrieving the statues of Raja Raja Chola I and his consort Lokamadevi from galleries, but now it has turned its focus on the gross negligence of the temple officials and others in not reporting such thefts.
The statues are apparently housed at a gallery in Ahmedabad.
It has now come to light that scores of invaluable idols had been smuggled out of the temple and worse still, the stakeholders had all the while turned a blind eye to the crimes.
The investigation also revealed that the temple officials and the Hindu Religious and Charitable Endowments Department officials rarely inspected the vaults, or took stock of the icons present or reconciled them with any record of inventory over several years.
There is no official record of any senior official from the HR& CE Department having inspected or even visited the safe housing the icons here.
Even senior officials of the department feigned ignorance of the existence of these idols in the Big Temple vault all these years.
The Idol Wing police sources claimed that the systematic lifting or smuggling of the icons from the Big Temple had been going on for more than 50 years.
When he was Chief Minister, Mr. Karunanidhi constituted a team comprising archaeologist and epigraphist R. Nagaswamy, Chola historian Kudavayil Balasubramanian and senior bureaucrat V. Irai Anbu to look into the specific case of the missing icons of Raja Raja Chola and Lokamadevi.
Team’s conclusion
The team meticulously gathered the details and reconciled them with the icons available with the Sarabhai Foundation galleries and concluded that they were the original statues lifted from the Big Temple.
There were occasional talks in some circles about the icons missing from the Big Temple but surprisingly no complaint had so far been registered with the police thus far.
The probe also revealed that the icons now present in the Big Temple vault would probably have not seen any puja over the past decade or more. The precious bronze idols were draped with worn-out cloth.
During the investigations, some of the Sivacharyas acknowledged that some of the icons in the safe were not vintage stuff and had been installed anew.
Queries on the whereabouts of the original icons by the investigators did not yield any result from the officials. At the Big Temple mahamandapam, a stupendous bronze statue was displayed with the name board proclaiming it as emperor Raja Raja Chola.
Identity effaced
Investigators found that the temple officials had effaced the original identity of the icon which was emperor Rajendra Chola and had put up a sticker as Raja Raja Chola.
At the same mahamandapam, not just some icons but also ancient Thiruvachi (ornamental arch fitted behind the pedestal of the icons) and pedestals of some statues have gone missing, the probe has revealed.
Inscriptions in the temple speak of a total of 66 bronze icons having been donated during the time of Emperor Raja Raja Chola I. But most of them are missing.
Some of the other prominent icons missing from the temple include golden Kolkai Thevar, golden Kshetra Balagar, silver Vasudevan, a huge Ardhanareeswarar, fur bronze idols donated by Kundavai Nachiyar, two Uma Maheswari icons, statue of Vanavan Madevi, her husband Sundara Cholar.
It is now expected that the expanded investigation by the Idol Wing would look into the whereabouts of those icons as well.
