Queen Victoria's statute at Kolkata's Victoria Memorial. (Getty Images photo)

Queen Victoria's statute in Bangalore's Cubbon Park. (TOI file photo by Robert Maria Clement)

AGRA: Three 200-year-old life-size statues of queen of Britain, Victoria, at Mathura museum were vandalized by miscreants on Friday. According to the museum authorities, the trio damaged the statues made up of eight metals, ‘ashtadhatu’, with hammer and shovels. They broke the nose and fingers of the statues.The government museum of Mathura, formerly called The Curzon Museum of Archaeology , is situated on Murari Lal Rajpal road, Dampier Nagar. It was founded by F S Growse in 1874 when he was the collector of the district. The present building housing the museum was opened in 1930.A few years ago, the Victoria statues were brought to Mathura museum from Aligarh and Badaun while the two other statues of the queen, kept in Mathura museum, were sent to Lucknow.Accordint to sources, the two of the vandals were overpowered by the museum guards while the third managed to slip away. The duo nabbed have been identified as Arvind Tyagi of Sanjai colony in Faridabad and Rinku, a resident of Adarsh Nagar in Ballabhgarh. They were handed over to the Mathura police.“The miscreants said they want to damage all things which are a symbol of British Raj. They also claimed to be part of a group called ‘ Swadeshi Sanstha ’,” said SSP of Mathura Nitin Tiwari.Police quoted the assistant director of the government museum SP Singh as saying that the youths first threw hammers over the museum wall in the courtyard to avoid being caught carrying tools inside. They then purchased tickets to enter the premises. They went to the spot where one of the Victoria statues was placed for public view and damaged it. They also damaged two others statues placed elsewhere in the premises.The youths allegedly beat up the museum staff who tried to catch them.Local people, however, had another tale to tell. They said the incident was a result of mismanagement by the museum authorities. Ashok Bansal, a social activist, alleged that the museum authorities have always been careless in managing statues and artefacts.