SYDNEY, AUSTRALIA, August 16, 2014 (The Australian): Indian police have revealed that an 1,100-year-old Hindu sculpture of Shiva with His hands broken off was stolen from beneath a peepol tree in a Tamil Nadu temple complex, after it was taken outside for unauthorized repairs. The solid, 44 inch-high stone carving was then smuggled from India to New York, where in 2004 it was sold to the Art Gallery of NSW for $300,000.
According to the theft report by local police in the southern Indian state of Tamil Nadu, the Ardhanarishvara was removed in 2002 along with seven other damaged sculptures from Vridhdhagiriswarar Temple to the place outside from which the Siva alone was stolen. A temple donor had agreed to pay for the pieces to be repaired and a sculptor had been assigned the task, even though temple authorities had not received permission for the undertaking.
Within two years of the theft, the Shiva with Nandi had been furnished with a bogus collecting history and sold by New York antiquities dealer Subhash Kapoor to the Sydney gallery. Kapoor was arrested three years ago and is awaiting trial in Tamil Nadu, his case having been delayed while prosecutors await the return from Australia of the Ardhanarishvara and a dancing Shiva bought by the National Gallery of Australia in 2008 for $5.6 million.