One of the statuettes that was recovered. Picture by Kundan Yolmo

Siliguri, May 18: Two idols of black stone, probably from the 12th century AD, were recovered when a joint force of the customs and the SSB sneaked upon smugglers in the dead of night in an operation conducted after a tip-off.

The smugglers, however, escaped, leaving behind the statuettes of the sitting Buddha and Goddess Saraswati playing the veena (a stringed musical instrument) in a gunny bag.

The operation had been conducted on Friday night and the SSB had alerted the preventive wing of the customs in Panitanki on the India-Nepal border after it received the information.

A team of eight from the two forces — the SSB was led by Kedarnath Sharma and the customs by W. Bhutia — was patrolling the distance between pillars 46 and 47, when they noticed two men.

“It was around 12.30am and we were at Warishjote, about 40km from Siliguri. We spotted the men and challenged them. The left behind the bag they were carrying and fled across the border in the cover of darkness,” said W. Bhutia, the superintendent of Panitanki customs.

“Both the idols are made from black stone. The height of the Saraswati idol is 16cm and width 10cm while the Buddha statuette is 10cmx8cm,” he added.

According to Bhutia the price of the idols in the international market would be around Rs 20 lakh. “Both the idols seem to be from the 12th century. We will be sending them to the history department of North Bengal University for verification tomorrow,” he said.

The customs department had seized two statuettes — of an unidentified goddess and Lord Vishnu — on January 16 this year while they were being smuggled into Nepal. They, too, were made of black stone and almost of the same size as the figurines seized today.

“The university’s history department had then valued the idols at Rs 20 lakh, which is why we estimate that the price of the latest seizures would be almost the same. That is why we also think that these figures too are from the same period as the earlier one,” Bhutia said.

The customs official admitted that the Panitanki entry point is being used frequently by smugglers to ferry artefacts to Nepal. “Therefore, we always check every tip-off or information that we get,” the customs official said.

According to the SSB, it was difficult to prevent the smuggling totally as the smugglers’ network is much stronger than the force.

“The smugglers are now using women as carrier making our task difficult since we don’t have any female personnel and so cannot search them,” said an official of the 22nd Battalion of the SSB’s headquarters in Ranidanga.

Currently, the force guards the 289km India-Nepal border from Sikkim to Kishanganj in Bihar with 70 border out posts. “We are trying to increase this number,” the official added.