Policeman Implicated in Indian Idol Theft

Kader Batcha

A member of Tamil Nadu's Idol Wing has been implicated in the theft of idols sold to Subhash Kapoor (V. P. Raghu, ' Chennai: Idol wing cop icon is fugitive on the run', Deccan Chronicle Jun 29, 2017).  Indian cop Kader Batcha is a fugitive wanted in connection with a robbery in Aruppukottai Madurai.

The Idol Wing sleuths had on Monday arrested special sub-inspector N Subburaj, attached to the Koyambedu police station for allegedly robbing three idols from a man in Madurai at gunpoint with the help of Batcha when both were working in the Idol Wing in 2008. The duo threatened and assaulted two men who had stumbled upon the ancient idols in Madurai while ploughing the land. [...]  After robbing the idols from Madurai, he and Subburaj brought three idols — Siva- Parvathy and Amman — to Chennai and sold two idols for `25 lakh to city dealer Dheenadayalan who was a well-known art dealer then. “It looks like Kader Batcha knew Dheenadayalan from 2005 and his illegal activities of smuggling out antique idols. So he used that contact to sell the idols of Siva - Parvathy which reached Subash Kapoor's gallery in Manhattan within a few weeks. A buyer from Bangkok purchased it from there,” a police official said. 

 Anti-collector activists opposed to the private ownership of artifacts fail to see that many objects leave the country of origin through the activities of corrupt local officials.