Antique idols stolen from Mangalore, along with gold bars, ATM cards and cash found at the Shailashree Vihar house on Saturday. Telegraph picture

Bhubaneswar, July 13: A special squad of Cuttack-Bhubaneswar police and a police team from Mangalore recovered three antique idols, which were stolen from a Jain shrine at Moodbidri, about 40km from Mangalore in Karnataka, from Shailashree Vihar here today.

The idols were stolen from the shrine on the night of July 5 along with 12 other idols. The matter came in to light when the head monk lodged a complaint in this regard the next morning.

The joint team also recovered more than a kilogram of gold that is believed to have been obtained by melting some stolen idols, apart from Rs 2.05 lakh in cash from a house at Sailashree Vihar.

The police said the idols were stolen by Santosh Das, alias Ghanashyam Das, 35, who hails from Itamati village in Nayagarh district. He had kept the booty in the Shailashree Vihar house of his father-in-law Digambar Mohanty.

The police also seized eight ATM cards, more than 10 bank chequebooks and hundreds of precious stones, including diamonds, from the house. Das had accounts in several banks across the country. His father-in-law Mohanty works as a Grade-IV employee at the state housing and urban development department. The police have seized two PAN cards bearing the original name and the alias of the accused.

Das is absconding. The police have questioned Mohanty, but have not arrested him yet.

“The Mangalore police located Mohanty by tracing his mobile phones. We are keeping a close watch on him,” said a senior official of the Cuttack-Bhubaneswar police.

“He is involved in a number of idol theft cases in Nepal and Indian states such as Maharashtra, Bengal, Karnataka, Gujarat and Andhra Pradesh. He was lodged in Hyderabad’s central jail in connection with a theft case and was released three months ago,” said a police official.

The police also said that Das used to introduce himself as an employee of Bombay Stock Exchange and had property worth crores at his parental village.

Media reports said of the 15 idols stolen from Mangalore, eight dated back to third and fifth century BC and five cast in gold a century ago. The Mangalore police had also released a sketch of the accused from a CCTV footage of the shrine and information provided by the monks.

“We have constituted several squads to arrest the accused. They have been sent to various parts of the country,” Mangalore police commissioner Manish Karbikar told The Telegraph.

The Cuttack-Bhubaneswar police here said they would freeze all bank accounts of Das in the state and seize his personal bank lockers. The police are also looking into the possibility of Das having smuggled some of the stolen idols to Nepal.