Valuable Deity Stolen from UK Temple

March 28, 2007

southmanchesterreporter.co.uk

UNITED KINGDOM, March 22, 2007: A precious consecrated statue of a Hindu God was stolen from a temple just minutes after an afternoon worship. The US$10,000 Deity, which depicts Lord Subramaniam, was taken from the Gita Bhavan temple in Whalley Range. It's thought the raiders broke in through a front entrance and then hooked a rope from the front door of the priests' living guarters inside the temple to a radiator to lock the priests inside. Ranga Nath Shastri and Shyam Sunder, Gita Bhavan's two priests, live in separate living quarters inside the temple. Neither of the two men are thought to have been in at the time, but Prepremlata Shastri, the wife of Ranga Nath Shastri, arrived back at the temple at about the time the thieves struck. The access to the priests' quarters is in a different part of the building and when Mrs. Shastri tried to open the door to get into the main worship area she couldn't get out because the door was stuck. That gave the thieve s enough time to go into the shrine and take the gold and bronze Deity.

Despite the private anguish, worshippers at the Withington Road temple have kept quiet about he theft, which occurred at around 3:30 p.m. on Friday, February 23, until now. Worshipper Dhana Laxi Bala, who paid for it to be made and transported to England from India, wept as she told the Reporter how the Deity became a source of strength for her after the death of her husband Bala Subramaniam. The only known existing picture of the Deity has now been sent to India in the hope that a replacement can be made. The bronze-plated Deity at Gita Bhavan was hand-crafted in the south of India and flown over to Manchester six years ago. A police spokesman said officers had made door-to-door inquiries and that the investigation was continuing.