HP: 3 held in temple theft case, idols seized

With the arrest of three persons from Delhi and recovery of eight stolen idols, worth crores, police today claimed to have cracked the Devta Sahib Bondra temple theft case in Banchunch village of Rohroo here.
"The Himachal police arrested the three accused from the national capital in a joint operation with Delhi police in the wee hours and recovered all the eight idols stolen from the temple of 'Devta Ji Bondra' in Banchunch," Director General of Police Sanjay Kumar said.
"We traced the idols from Sarai Dhar, 30 kms from Rohroo, as the miscreants had buried them in a jungle. We are handing them over to the temple management committee, he said.

The crime was committed on the intervening night of July 22 and 23, wherein the miscreants had killed the 66-year-old watchman at the temple and stolen antique idols and gold ornaments of the deity and other valuables.
The accused identified as Dhirender Shahi, Bharat Shahi and Ramesh (all Nepali migrants) have been brought to Rohroo and their custody is being transferred to Shimla police.
The accused were arrested from Delhi with the help of mobile surveillance, the police official said.

The value of antique idols ran in crores as some of them were around 300 years old.
At the time of theft, the idols were lying in a palanquin inside a temple room after a display in a local fair with tags of antique value of the idols.

The accused had taken away some valuable ornaments to Delhi to assess their value in the market, police said.
One ashtadhatu idol of main deity "Vasudeva" with sapphire on head, a garland of precious stones around the neck and weighing 7-kg and another idol of "devata" also weighing 6-kg, 42 precious articles offered by devotees, 300 gm gold and four solid silver balls were stolen from the temple.
The sapphire was purchased by temple few years ago for Rs 1.72 lakh and a Tibetan monk had carved some script on the stones on the necklace which could not be deciphered till date.