Tamilnadu is the HUB of Temples........... Read this intresting blog........ Palaniswamy, whose family guarded Brihadeeswara Temple in Sripuranthan for centuries, lights a lamp at an empty spot now Reality ends beyond the cracked mud huts of Sripuranthan, 300 km off Chennai. A rubble path winds past scraggy cattle and frolicking children, into the eerie quiet of a tumbled ruin: Brihadeeswara temple. A man-sized stone warrior guards the doorway, half-sunk in sand. Hundreds of bats whirl overhead, shrieking at the intrusion. Exposed beams, textured by time and mould, add to the musty smell in the air. Cobwebs on prayer lamps enhance the sense of abandonment. The altar is stripped bare, like a frame without a picture: Its a temple without a god. The 1,000-year-old guardian of the temple, Shiva Nataraja, is missing from his abode. But all is not lost The Lord of Cosmic Dance has travelled 9,000 km to the National Gallery of Art (NGA) in Canberra, Australia. How did he get there? Ask Subhash Kapoor, 65, a New Delhi-born and New York-based antiquity dealer, considered an art connoisseur as well as one of the biggest idol smugglers in the world. He sold the Nataraja to NGA for Rs.31 crore in 2008. Ask the men of the Idol Wing, the antiquity theft squad of Tamil Nadu Polices Economic Offences Wing (EOW.) They will tell you how the master art thief worked a network of lowlife criminals to loot timeless treasures and sell them to the highest bidder. Ask the Homeland Security Investigations (HIS) of America. They accuse Kapoor of stealing over 150 idols worth $100 million from India. The missing god is at the centre of a curious trial that has just started in a district court in Tamil Nadu. Its the old story of human greed and relentless pursuit of profit. But its new in its span, complexity and daring. It blends two vastly different worlds, art and police intelligence, spanning across continents: India, Thailand, US, UK and Australia. Art and antiquity theft is one of the most lucrative crimes, says IPS officer Prateep V. Philip, currently additional director general, EOW, in Chennai. It outbids drug trafficking, arms dealing, and money laundering. Hence the odds of recovering stolen treasures are abysmal, one in ten. But in this case, the Idol Wing has managed to trace eight of the 28 idols stolen from Sripuranthan and the nearby village of Suthamalli, to various museums and galleries across the world. The case promises to be one of the most significant courtroom tests on how to track art and antiquity crimes in an increasingly networked world. But ultimately its a searing morality tale, where arrogance, pride and hubris lead to individual downfall. A mastermind Is there anything unique about Kapoor? Yes, say the officers of EOW: His right ear is half-bitten. It happened when he was kidnapped as a young boy. His captors had chewed off half his ear. Anything else? Yes. The divorcee has left a trail of girlfriends across continents who help him in fabricating documents. In fact, it is a ditched lover who provided vital clues to the Interpol. Police find visual match between the Nataraja stolen from the Sripuranthan temple in Tamil Nadu (left) and the sculpture displayed at the National Gallery of Australia, Canberra (right) Kapoor possibly learnt his trade from his father. Parshotam Ram Kapoor, who had a gallery in Delhi which allegedly trafficked in stolen antiquities sourced from temple thieves of India, Pakistan and Afghanistan. Kapoor, too, has contacts spanning across India, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Hong Kong, Indonesia, Dubai, Cambodia and Bangkok, says Philip. Kapoor and his family earned a reputation as respectable and enlightened art collectors in the US. But that was a front, says Philip. Kapoor roamed the London and Frankfurt book fairs, bought books, did his research and then travelled to countries rich with objets dart, set up middlemen who could procure those and used a wide network of collectors, museum curators and dealers to ship and sell his ill-gotten art with fake documents. Big man, big money Its hard to imagine Kapoor at the district court of Jayankondam. About 270 km away from Chennai, its a rural outpost that has suddenly spouted wings on huge lignite deposits, new power, mining and cement factories. But at its core, it remains a small temple town. No other language but Tamil works here (no wonder, Kapoor asked for a translator). Nidi Turai Kutravial Naduvar Nidhimandram, reads a signboard on the judicial magistates court, a colonial red brick building with a high ceiling and slow-spinning fans, crammed with litigants, lawyers, visitors and touts. Lawyers here often boycott proceedings demanding better courtrooms. Clad in crisp blue business shirts, with a white towel covering his face, Kapoor comes here in a prison bus to attend the hearings. The only thing he says is that he is innocent: They have no case. Subhash Kapoor was at Frankfurt book fair when interpol detained him. A far cry for a man who spent more than 30 years in the tony ZIP codes of Manhattan, New York. With his flourishing private museum, Art of the Past, Kapoor hobnobbed with the well-heeled and well-funded, was the person to drop in on for anything to do with Indian art and was ever-present at major art dos across the world. He also ran a fine-art storage business, Sofia Storage, and a lucrative import-export business of antiquities, Nimbus Import Inc, in New York. According to A.G. Pon Manickavel, deputy inspector general and in-charge of the Idol Wing, Kapoor stayed at the five-star Taj Connemara hotel every time he visited Chennai and met local art dealers. The network of local temple thieves was lured with the promise of big money. By his own confession to the police (later retracted), he had paid $700,000 through his HSBC Bank account for the 28 idols-nothing compared to what he earned for them, but big enough to lure the thugs. The client is a big man. Stick with us and you will get so rich that you wont have to work ever, one of the seven local thugs, Marisamy, was told after he handed over 10 idols and received Rs.25 lakh. Unsafe for gods No one really knows when the temples were looted. No one guessed that the three-foot, 150 kg Nataraja was one of the finest specimens of Chola art. Made of metal alloy, pancha loha, with one part gold and the rest silver, copper, bronze and lead, it didnt just have sacred significance. It was also immensely precious and expensive. With the local priest of Sripuranthan packing up and leaving for Chennai around the mid-1970s, daily worship had stopped. About 10 years ago, there was an attack of visha vanddu, poison bugs, says 35-year-old Palaniswamy, whose family has watched over the temple for generations. Villagers followed a tradition of bringing an idol of mother goddess, Kaliamman, over to the Nataraja temple once every three years to celebrate harvests. During one such occasion, swarms of highly venomous giant hornets had attacked villagers. Ever since, the big black door had stayed shut, the ancient padlock gathering rust. And people forgot about it, making it extremely easy for professional and knowledgeable temple thieves to raid and loot.
Posted on: Wed, 16 Jul 2014 05:01:26 +0000
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