Andhra Pradesh - Nellore   

Idol-lifting gang members face `wrath' of God

Staff Reporter

While the kingpin died, others have fallen sick and have nightmares of idols staring at them

NELLORE: A gang which was involved in a series of idol theft cases has eventually become God-fearing besides being down with idol phobia.

If one were to go by the claims of gang members, many weird incidents happened in their lives. The kingpin of the gang, Venkata Narasimhachari, died a few days after stealing idols. K. Kiran Kumar was hurt in a road accident while K. Harinath was bedridden in a similar accident.

Other members - N. Kondala Rao, V. Siva Kumar, V. Mastan and Nayab Rasool fallen sick and almost all of them have nightmares of idols staring at them for the last few days, said one of the gang members to the Kavali police, who arrested the members and produced them before a local court on Monday. Two other members, G. Balachander and D. Venkatrao, are at large.

The gang stole Panchaloha idols from a Lord Siva temple at Gattupalli on January 18 and from Sri Venugopalaswamy temple at Chenchuganipalem of Kavali mandal on February 21.

Police said that the gang members were clueless as to how to sell them. Hence they decided to melt them to fetch gold and accordingly they took the idols to the nearby forest and poured acid on them, which were eventually reduced to ashes.

But a week later, the key member of the group Narasimhachari died in sleep. The sudden demise of the kingpin created tension among the gang members.

Unable to withstand the inexplicable incidents, they buried them.

However, one of the gang members was arrested in a nuisance case and on interrogation he revealed the involvement of the gang in idol theft cases. The police recovered idols whose antique value in international market is over Rs 50 lakh.

Printer friendly page  
Send this article to Friends by E-Mail

Stories in this Section

Idol-lifting gang members face `wrath' of God
Technology centre for Audisankara College

Copyright © 2007, The Hindu. Republication or redissemination of the contents of this screen are expressly prohibited without the written consent of The Hindu