Indian police called in over the case of Vriddhachalam Statue

Michaela Boland, 'Indian police called in over the case of gallery's stolen statue' The Australian, July 29, 2013

A FORTNIGHT after a valuable statue owned by the Art Gallery of NSW was found to have been stolen from a temple in southern India, the case has been referred to police investigators there.

It is notable that the Vriddhachalam statue was photographed at the temple in 1974.

The photo was taken by the French Institute Pondicherry, a research unit funded by the French government which from the 1950s has sought to create a database of significant antiquities in southern India.[...] A researcher at the French Institute told The Australian that in 21 years he did not field an inquiry from an Australian art gallery researching Indian artefacts, despite the institute's well-known database intended to serve exactly that purpose. Last year, after Kapoor was arrested and Canberra's National Gallery of Australia was revealed to have been one its his most enthusiastic clients, a curator from there contacted the IFP for the first time.

The newspaper also contains the information that the trial of Subhash Kapoor "is imminent".

A reporter for The Hindu newspaper, Srivasthan A, told The Australian: "The charge sheet has been filed, the evidences and papers notified."