9 Years After Robbery, Odisha Thief Returns Stolen Jewellery Worth Lakhs With Apology Note

A thief, who had stolen Lord Krishna's ornaments from the Gopinath Temple in Odisha's Gopinathpur, returned them after nine years with a note saying he regretted his action. In the note, he said?he had been getting nightmares since the theft.?Interestingly, the thief also paid a fine of Rs 300.?

According to a report by News18 Odia, the thief had left the bag of stolen items at the temple's front door in the middle of the night. The value of these ornaments is said to be in lakhs.

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He left an apology note

In the apology note addressed to the priest, Devesh Chandra Mohanty, the thief also left an additional Rs 300 as an atonement along with the jewellery. A report in India Today stated that the man had recently read the Bhagavad Gita and realised the error of his ways.

"During 2014, (from) a Yagna at Yagna Shala (where the ritual of Yagna takes place), I had taken the ornaments for which I faced a lot of problems during these 9 years and I surrender these," the thief who wished to remain anonymous wrote in a note.

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Robbery took place in 2014

In May 2014, several silver ornaments of the Radha-Krishna temple at Gopinathpur village in Bhubaneswar were stolen. The stolen ornaments included headgear, earrings, bracelets and a flute that belonged to the presiding deities Krishna and Radha. Despite a police complaint, there was no breakthrough in the case.

The villagers had given up all hope when the stolen items were not found after days of search. However, after the return of the ornaments, there were celebrations in the village, the News18 Odia report stated.

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Temple priest Kailash Panda said the recovery of the stolen ornaments is nothing short of a miracle."We did not expect the ornaments to reappear like this. We had purchased new ornaments for the deities after the incident. This is nothing but divine intervention," Panda told HT.

Meanwhile, Abil Dhir of INTACH (Indian National Trust for Art and Cultural Heritage), Odisha, feels the Antiquities Act needs to be more stringent as Odisha tops the list both in temple idol thefts and the failure to recover the stolen artefacts.

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