Motive unknown, main culprit untraced still

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A week after two Vishnu statuettes were stolen from Zia International Airport (ZIA), law enforcers are yet to find out the motive behind the theft, their destruction and trace Abbas of “Abbas-Nasir” gang, a ZIA-based group who apparently had the artefacts stolen.

Rab’s search for the missing fragments of the two Vishnu statuettes at a garbage dumping ground of Baliarpur in Aminbazar on the outskirts of the capital failed to produce any results yesterday.

The fragments, which were recovered earlier, are now in police hands as evidence.

Rapid Action Battalion (Rab) sources said many of their personnel who were involved in the search operation at the garbage dump became sick. For this reason, they had to conduct the search operation in the later half of the day yesterday.

“With the help of street urchins we began the search yesterday around 2:00pm and continued until sunset. We mainly shifted through the rubbish searched by Rab personnel on Friday,” said a Rab official.

Major Aminul Haque, who was involved with the search operation of Rab-1, told The Daily Star that a daylong search operation would commence at 8:00am today.

Working at the dumping site throughout Friday, some 200 Rab personnel gathered around 200 pieces of the two statuettes. Later, two National Museum officials identified 27 pieces as parts of the stolen Gupta era “Vishnu” and “Bust of Vishnu” idols.

According to a National Museum official, of the fragments salvaged, 20 make up about 25 percent of the black terracotta statuette of Vishnu where the Hindu god stands with goddesses Saraswati and Laxmi. The other pieces make up a little over 10 percent of the bust.

Police said 80 percent of the goddesses portion of the statuette was retrieved and only a fraction of a hand (one hand was already missing) and legs of Vishnu was recovered.

Meanwhile, the investigators are yet to find out the motive behind the theft and destruction of the 1,500-year-old relics that were stolen from ZIA on December 22. The two along with 143 others were awaiting shipment to Paris for an exhibition at the Guimet Museum.

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