Bhubaneswar, Jul 16: Two days after a joint team of Bhubaneswar and Mangalore police recovered some antique idols, which were allegedly stolen from a Jain temple near Mangalore recently, the police on Monday arrested two persons, including a woman from whose house the booty was seized here.
The accused were identified as Diptimayee Mohanty and Digambar Mohanty. Diptimayee is wife of Santosh Das, aka Ghanashyam, whom police described as the main accused. Santosh is still on the run. Digambar is the father-in-law of Santosh. Police seized nearly 1 kg gold from a bank locker of Santosh.
"This is the first arrest in the case. We arrested both of them on charges of abetment. They refused to divulge details of Santosh, who had visited Digambar's house on July 8 and hidden the stolen items there," said a Mangalore police officer.
Police are yet to ascertain whether the one kilogram gold seized from Digambar's house, were stolen from the Jain temple. "Since Santosh was an interstate thief, we are verifying the source from where he got the gold. We suspect his involvement in some jewelry theft cases in the city," Bhubaneswar DCP Nitinjeet Singh said.
As many as 15 idols of Jain, made out of gold, pearls, precious stones and diamond, were stolen on late night of July 5 from Siddantha Mandir of Guru Basadi in Moodbidri, popularly known as 'Jain Kashi', about 35 kilometer from Mangalore. The shrine had total 64 idols of religious importance to Jains. The joint police teams on Saturday had seized three idols, some gold ingots, which made out after melting a few idols, Rs 2 lakh cash and gemstones, totalling more than Rs three crore from Digambar's house at Chandrasekharpur.
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