An emerald lingam claimed to be worth Rs 500 crore has been recovered from a bank locker of a man in Tamil Nadu’s Thanjavur on Thursday. ADGP K Jayanth Murali, who head the idol wing CID police, told reporters in Chennai on Friday that they acted on a tip that antique idols were kept at a house in Thanjavur.
Cops acted on a tip that antique idols are kept at a house
A team led by additional superintendents of police R Rajaram and P Ashok Natarajan visited the house and questioned 80-year-old N S Aruna Baskar, a resident of the house at Arulananda Nagar Seventh Street in the city. The man, according to sources, told police that his octogenarian father N A Samiyappan has an emerald lingam in his bank locker.
An emerald lingam went missing in 2016
After Baskar said that his family didn’t possess any documents for it, the police team seized the 8cm tall and 500gm in weight idol. According to TOI sources, an FIR is pending about an emerald lingam going missing from a Shiva temple in Tirukkuvalai in Tiruvarur district in 2016, and preliminary investigations showed that the recovered artefact could be the one.
