Chennai: The Madras high court on Thursday directed the Sarabhai Foundation in Ahmedabad to file its reply to an affidavit seeking a direction to the Investigation team of the Idol wing, headed by IG Pon Manickavel, to seize all the 36 idols, 3 bronze lamps and 8 artefacts lying in the museum of the Sarabhai Foundation.
A division bench comprising Justices R. Mahadevan and P.D. Audikesavalu posted after two weeks, further hearing of the petition filed by advocate Elephant G. Rajendran.
According to petitioner, he had visited the museum and saw number of antique idols of Hindu deities kept there. The Sarabhai Foundation filed a petition before this court in which it admitted that it was keeping 36 bronze idols, 3 bronze lamps and 8 different stone artefacts in the museum. The idols of deities were of “very huge dimension”, particularly in respect of height and weight. They were meant only for “public worship in Hindu temples”, he added.
He said the Natarajar idols, Umahemavathi (Konerirajapuram), Kalyanasundarar idols and others were “stolen idols” coming within the purview of section 410 IPC. All these idols belong to Hindu temples in Tamil Nadu. All of them were under regular worship in temples for crores of Hindu devotees for the past 200 to 1,000 years.
Sarabhai Foundation admitted that these idols belong to Tamil Nadu. It also claimed that these idols were purchased from Govindasamynathan, the then Advocate General of Madras State in 1940 through a sale agreement. It was completely a false statement, deliberately made by Sarabhai Foundation, because there was no advocate general by name Govindasamynathan in 1940, he added.
He said there were reasonable grounds to believe that the alleged transaction of sale of these idols ought to have taken place between Govind Swaminathan and Goutam Sarabhai in 1976. But actually such sale did not take place at all. His further enquiry revealed that no licence for sale of antiquities in Tamil Nadu had been issued by the Archaeological Survey of India, Chennai circle for the past 70 years. It was crystal clear that these idols and artefacts were stolen from the Hindu Temples in Tamil Nadu. The Sarabhai Foundation has no legal right to keep the idols in its museum. Hence, they cannot have any legal right to keep them in their custody. They were the properties of temples in Tamil Nadu. Therefore, they have to be returned to the temples in Tamil Nadu for worship, he added.
