CHENNAI: Sleuths of the state idol wing CID on Tuesday night arrested four people, including an engineer employed at a thermal power plant, for stealing a 600-year old panchaloha idol from a temple at Uthiramerur near Kancheepuram. The suspects planned to sell the idol to an agent in Malaysia, police said.

Police, who believe the idol of Sundaramurthy Nayanar is worth around Rs 2.35 crore in the international market, added that Archaeological Survey of India (ASI) officials had, after verification, confirmed that it dated to around 1,400AD.

During inquiries, Mahendran, 41, of Mangal village in Tiruvannamalai, Sekar, 28, of Uthiramerur, and Dakshinamurthy, 29, and Karthik, 25, both residents of Olukarai village, admitted that they had stolen the idol from a dilapidated temple near Uthira merur, around 30km from Kancheepuram town, said an idol wing CID official. Strangely, none of the police stations in and around Uthiramerur had registered any case of an antique idol stolen from any of the ancient temples in the area, he added.

The arrested men were on Wednesday produced before the

in Kumbakonam, designated to try idol theft cases among others, and were later lodged in the

at

.

It was based on specific information provided from Malaysia that a team of the idol wing CID zeroed in on the four men at a hideout near Balu Chetty Chathiram in Kancheepuram district.

The informer in Malaysia had told police that four men were trying to strike a business transaction with an agent in the Southeast Asian country.

The special team led by inspector general of police A G Pon Manickavel and deputy superintendents of police Ramesh, Raghupathi and Shivasankar seized a Maruthi van from the four men.

Deputy inspector general Thenmozhi and superintendent of police Santhosh Haidmeni were also involved in the operation.

Of the four men, a police officer said, Dakshinamurthy was an engineer who worked on a temporary basis at a thermal power plant in Ennore, while Karthik, a diploma holder, was employed as a sales manager in a private company .

Deputy superintendent of police, idol wing CID, Shivasankar, was later tasked with following the case to its logical end.

A police officer said they had collected the mobile phones of the four suspects and were verifying the call records to see if they had any links to international art smuggling gangs.

They are also looking into how they had managed to contact the agent in Malaysia.