https://www.thehindu.com/news/natio...s-idol-theft-case-quashed/article24682898.ece
Says two idols seized from museum run by her foundation were not stolen
Sarabhai Foundation, a public charitable trust represented by Gira Sarabhai, 94-year-old sister of Vikram Sarabhai who is regarded as father of India’s space programmes, has approached the Madras High Court accusing Idol Wing CID officials here of having forcibly taken away two icons from a museum run by the foundation at Ahmedabad in Gujarat.
The foundation claimed that the two idols, taken away by the police officials on May 29, had been in its possession since 1942. It asserted that the icons were not the ancient idols of Raja Raja Cholan and queen Nambiratiyar Logamatheviyar, which were reportedly stolen from the Brihadeeswarar Temple, a UNESCO world heritage site, in Thanjavur in the late 1960s.
The submissions were made in a petition filed by the foundation to quash a First Information Report (FIR) registered against it on March 2 on the charge of being in illegal possession of the two idols. The FIR had been booked on the basis of a complaint lodged by V.V. Swaminathan, a former Minister as well as Member of Parliament, in January.
When the petition came up for hearing before a Division Bench of Justices R. Mahadevan and P.D. Audikesavalu on Monday, it granted six weeks time for the Idol Wing CID to file its counter affidavit and adjourned the matter thereafter. In its petition, the foundation stated that the allegations levelled against it were absurd and untenable in law.
Recalling the history, Ms. Sarabhai, one of the trustees of the foundation, claimed that the two idols, now taken away by Idol Wing CID, were actually owned by S. Gopalachari, former Diwan of the State of Travancore. He had documented them well, along with their photographs, in the Journal of the Indian Society of Oriental Art in 1938.
On August 16, 1940, Gautam Sarabhai, brother of Vikram Sarabhai, entered into a sale agreement with the then Advocate General of State of Madras S. Gopal Swaminathan and purchased 36 icons (including the two under contention), three brass lamps and eight stone articles. Though the agreement was not traceable, certain vouchers were available to prove its existence.
In 1942, Mr. Gautam Sarabhai took possession of the artefacts after paying freight and insurance charges of ₹586 through a cheque drawn from Bank of India. In 1945, he paid the sale consideration of ₹42,000 to Mr. Swaminathan by way of a cheque drawn from Imperial Bank of India, Ms. Sarabhai claimed.
She said the idols were also lent for display by Gautam Sarabhai to the ‘Art of India and Pakistan’ exhibition held at
Royal Academy of Art in London in 1948. Though the Sarabhai Foundation was formed in 1959, her brother continued to keep the icons in his possession till his death on August 28, 1995.
In 1996, she handed over the icons to the foundation for safekeeping, and in 2010, the then Chief Minister M. Karunanidhi wrote a letter to her requesting to hand over the two icons to a team led by the then Minister for School Education and Archaeology Thangam Thennarasu, when it visited Gujarat to have a look at the icons.
“However, the delegation of the Government of Tamil Nadu could not establish the identity of the icons as to the ones at the foundation was the same as those stolen from the
Big Temple at Thanjavur (sic). The delegation had visited the foundation on September 7, 2010, but for lack of evidence regarding such identity, nothing further was done,” she said.
In 2012, Ms. Sarabhai handed over ownership of the icons to the foundation and the Madras High Court in 2016 refused to entertain a public interest litigation petition for retrieving them. Despite all this, the Idol Wing Officials barged into a museum run by the foundation in Ahmedabad on May 29 and took away the idols, she alleged.
Varying height
She said that the height of the
idols of Raja Raja Cholan and queen Logamatheviyar, which reportedly went missing from the Thanjavur temple in 1960s, was 56.8 cm and 46.8 cm respectively as per a book published by Vidya Dehijia in 2002. On the other hand, the icons seized from the foundation were 74 cm and 53.5 cm tall respectively.
“The petitioner submits that if at all the identity of the two icons at Sarabhai Foundation and those stolen from the temple at Thanjavur in the late 1960s is duly established, the petitioner trust would be willing to part with the two icons and not make a claim thereon,” her petition read.
