THE MAN WHO STOLE THE GODS
PALANISWAMY, WHOSE FAMILY GUARDED BRIHADEES WAR A TEMPLE IN SRIPURANTHAN FOR CENTURIES, LIGHTS A LAMPATAN EMPTY SPOT NOW. A suave conman’s love for art, greed for money and thirst for glory create an empire of loot
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: It’s 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 Yorkbased 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 Police’s 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.
It’s the old story of human greed and relentless pursuit of profit. But it’s 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