Jharkhand: 2 stolen Buddha statues recovered, 5 arrested
DAYS AFTER two stone statues of the Buddha had been stolen from a just lately excavated monastery – believed to be at the very least 900 years previous – in Jharkhand’s Hazaribagh district, police have arrested 5 individuals from Ranchi for the theft and recovered the statues.
The police mentioned all 5 accused performed a recce on the excavation website in Bahoranpur village in Hazaribagh on March 3, zeroing in on the 2 statues. On March 21, the statues went lacking, in response to ASI Patna’s Superintending Archaeologist Rajendra Dehuri’s grievance. On the premise of the grievance, an FIR was registered.
Hazaribagh SP Karthik S mentioned: “We scanned CCTV footage, mounted technical surveillance and questioned one Kumar Sujit of Ranchi. It led us to the other accused and the recovery of the stolen statues.” There arrests had been made on Thursday.
The police mentioned one other accused, Sanjay Aggarwal, who claims to be Ayurvedic medicines vendor, and Kumar Sujit got here to know of the statues from newspapers and “hatched a plan to sell those in black market at high prices”.
The police mentioned after conducting the recce, the accused assembled on the intervening night time of March 20 and 21 on the website. “They took away two 1.5-foot Buddha statues and fled on motorbikes to Hazaribagh bus stand from where they took a bus to Ranchi. They had planned to sell the statues after the hunt cooled down,” a police supply mentioned.
The ASI had found the monastery at Burhani village in February, excavating 10 stone statues of the Buddha and Tara. It additionally discovered a conveyable picture which gave the impression to be that of Shaivite deity Maheswari – indicating cultural assimilation within the space. ASI officers had mentioned the monastery was a “big find” — it’s on the previous path to Varanasi, 10 km from Sarnath, the place the Buddha gave his first sermon. They mentioned the presence of Tara’s statues confirmed the attainable proliferation of the Vajrayana type of Buddhism in Jharkhand.