Jajpur police busts idol theft racket recovered 31 idols, arrests 4 persons

Some of the seized idols are made of ‘astadhatu’ while others are made of brass, said Jajpur SP Vineet Agarwal.

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Jajpur: In a major breakthrough, Jajpur police busted an idol theft racket and arrested four members of the gang after recovering 31 idols from their possessions.

The arrested persons have been identified as Arvind Kumar Singh (43) and Babar alias Javed (40) of Uttar Pradesh and Vijay Shukla alias Pandit (51) and Sashidhar Nayak (49) of Nilgiri area of Odisha’s Balasore district.

Some of the seized idols are made of ‘astadhatu’ while others are made of brass, said Jajpur SP Vineet Agarwal adding that a gun, a bike and instruments used for committing theft were seized from their possessions.

The Jajpur district police had formed a special team to arrest the gang of thieves following reports of idol thefts at different temples of the district.

Four idols were stolen from the Krushnachandrapur temple under Jenapur police limits on the intervening night of February 19 and 20. Similarly, 19 idols were stolen from the Raghunathjew temple on February 20. Besides, on the intervening night of November 11 and 12 in 2022 several idols were stolen from the Siddha Baladevjew temple in Dharmashala area of the district.

While interrogating the accused persons, police came to know that the accused persons had planned to sell those stolen idols outside the state.

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