Two held in Karnataka Jain Temple theft case

Bhubaneswar, July 16: Karnataka Police has arrested two persons from here in conenction with the

of antiques from a Jain Temple near Mangalore and seized about 1 kg gold from their posession.

The arrested persons were identified as Diptimayee Mohanty, wife of Santosh Das, the prime accused in the theft case and Digambar Mohanty, his father-in-law. Santosh is still at large.

"This is the first arrest in the case. We arrested both on charges of abetment. They refused to divulge details of Santosh," said a Mangalore police officer.

Police are, however, yet to confirm whether 1 kg gold, seized from Santosh's bank locker, was stolen from the Jain temple.

"As Santosh is an inter-state thief, we are verifying the source from which he got the gold. We suspect his involvement in some jewellery theft in the city," said DCP (Bhubaneswar) Nitinjeet Singh.

Two days ago, the Karnataka Police with help of local police had seized some miniature idols of precious metals, gold ingots weighing 1.12 kg, gemstones and Rs 2 lakh cash, total worth about Rs 3 crore from a house at Chandrasekharpur here.

At least 15 Jain idols made of gold, pearls, precious stones and diamond, were stolen on July 5 night from Siddantha Mandir of Guru Basadi in Moodbidri, locally known as ‘Jain Kashi’. The shrine had total 64 idols of religious importance to Jains.

PTI