Two brass idols were stolen after burglars allegedly broke the locks of the Sri Sri Radha Gobinda Temple in Nagarkanda upazila of Faridpur, Bangladesh, early on Monday.
The stolen idols are a Radha-Krishna pair weighing around 18kg and a Gopal idol weighing around 4kg. They are estimated to be worth more than Tk 150,000, said the temple authority.
Rama Chakraborty, a priest of the temple, has filed a written complaint with Nagarkanda Police Station. The temple is located inside the Nagarkanda Central Kali Temple, near Dudhbazar on the bank of the Kumar River. Established in 1915, the century-old temple is about 10 metres away from Nagarkanda Police Station.
In his complaint, Rama said he locked the temple at around 9 pm on Sunday and went home, adjacent to the temple. When he returned at around 6 am on Monday to perform the morning puja, he found the lock broken and the two brass idols missing. He suspected that unidentified thieves broke into the temple sometime between around 12:30 am and 6 am and took away the idols.
Ranada Prasad Sarker, president of the Nagarkanda upazila unit of Bangladesh Puja Udjapan Front, said a brass bell had also been stolen from the temple around three months ago, although the temple authorities did not file any complaint with police at the time.
Nagarkanda Police Station Officer-in-Charge Rasul Samdani Azad confirmed the incident and said the thieves broke the locks of the temple gates and stole the idols. “There were two CCTV cameras at the temple. When we went there this morning, we found one camera out of order and the other covered with a piece of cloth,” he said.
Police have collected footage from CCTV cameras installed at nearby businesses and other locations in the market, adding, “We hope we will be able to identify the thieves soon.”
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