New Delhi, April 24: One of the two thieves who broke into the Patna museum last year and took away 18 priceless antique idols has been chargesheeted by the CBI.

Seventeen idols have been recovered from two thieves and three Calcutta art dealers arrested earlier, but there is no trace of the last artefact, dating back to the Pala dynasty.

Umesh Sao, held recently after he gave investigators the slip several times, is accused of breaking into the museum on September 26 last year along with an accomplice, Vinod Yadav, says the chargesheet filed in a Patna court last week.

The duo, from Gaya district, scaled a 20-feet wall to reach the room where the idols were kept.

According to the chargesheet, they had entered the complex a day before, but couldn’t get into the room. They returned the next day, a weekly holiday at the museum.

The CBI was asked to probe the case, sensational because of the audacious break-in.

Also, the idols stolen were of one of the rarest of their kind and believed to be worth millions of dollars on the international market.

The Interpol, which has a separate division dealing with the theft of antiques, had also been alerted about the heist.

The CBI found that some people in Calcutta were trying to sell antiques.

During a raid in the city, the agency arrested two brothers, Shahid Rashid Warsi and Shahid Miraj Warsi.

Though only two idols were recovered, the Warsis told the agency about Vinod who, after he was arrested, led sleuths to a paddy field near Batheri village in Nalanda from where 15 idols were recovered.

Vinod has said he knows nothing about the only idol still missing, but the hunt for it continues.

Chargesheets against Vinod and the Warsis were filed in January.

The agency is also looking for two other suspects in the case. One of them is Manglesh Kumar Singh, believed to have helped Vinod and Sao in the theft.

The other is Shahid Majid Warsi, the third of the Calcutta brothers.