The great antiques heist in Punjab

Chandigarh : While digging a mound, a 10-year-old girl discovered a stone sculpture at Mard Khera village in Sangrur in 1980. Villagers placed it in a specially-built room and it soon became the centre of activities. Weddings, Hindu or Sikh, would not be solemnised without the couple bowing before the idol. It started figuring on the first leaf of wedding albums. A series of newspaper articles called it a rare 11th century idol of God Surya. In the 1990s, it caught the attention of archaeologists. A team from the Archaeological Survey of India also carried out excavation at the site. A few months after the “exploration”, the idol went missing one night in 2003.
Rameshwar Dutt, a Sunam-based freelance archaeologist, remembers every detail. He had visited the village on the day the idol was found. Though Dutt doubts that the theft had anything to do with ASI’s visit, the villagers are sceptical.
With slight variances in the names of places and time of discovery of theft, this story is repeated in almost every town that had some ancient or medieval link. The deep-rooted nexus between antiques smugglers and the state Archaeology Department officials is once again in the spotlight after the former Director, Archaeology, Navjot Pal Singh Randhawa, confessed before the Directorate of Revenue Intelligence that he helped a smuggler buy Le Corbusier and Pierre Jeanerette furniture.