Narayan Putuwar was awakened by the sound of stones hitting the tin roof over his head. He turned, half-asleep, and checked the time: 12:30AM. He pulled himself up from bed, and slowly opened the door.
It was chilly out and the night was pitch dark. Suddenly, two figures materialised before him, their faces fully covered. One of them clutched Putuwar’s throat and pushed him against the wall.
“Not a word, or we will kill you,” he said in a whisper.
Putuwar was shaking with fear as he huddled in the corner, trying not to make a sound. Minutes turned into what seemed like hours. There were hushed voices outside with the sounds of feet shuffling and chains breaking. Then silence.
About half-an-hour later, Putuwar slowly walked out to the temple yard. The men had left, but the grilled gate of the shrine was open. He peered inside: the Akash Bhairav was gone.
There were two Bhairav sculptures at the temple in Halchok near Kathmandu, one of which was 300 years old. The second one was made in 2013 and installed over the original. Both were stolen on 7 December — a nightmare come true for Narayan Putuwar who has served as a priest of the temple for 13 years.
The robbery made it to the media on the week that Nepal was celebrating the restitution of the 800-year-old Laxmi-Narayan statue in PatkoTole of Lalitpur, stolen in 1984 and repatriated by the Dallas Museum of Art in 2021.
Even as Nepal’s stolen religious antiquities are being returned by collectors and museums in the West, there has been a slew of thefts of other religious objects from in and around Kathmandu.
A Basundhara statue was stolen from the Siddheshwar Mahadev Temple in Godavari on 6 December, but was discovered later lying in a nearby forest. Meanwhile, two suspects were arrested on 2 January from Lalitpur with a stone Buddha they had stolen, also from Godavari, on 30 December.
Nepal Police has registered at least 10 thefts of various religious, historical and cultural objects in the past year from Kathmandu Valley.
“Perhaps the reason we are now hearing more about these thefts is that there is increasing awareness among the public and media of the loss of cultural heritage and identities these thefts signify,” says public litigator and cultural activist Sanjay Adhikari.
Subhadra Bhattarai at the Department of Archaeology says there are reports of thefts of cultural and historical artefacts every year, but this alone does not mean that there has been an increase.
The first historical account of a religious object stolen from Nepal was as far back as 1765, when the statue of Narayan disappeared from the Bhagwati temple in Hanuman Dhoka. Plunder peaked in the 1960s, as Nepal started to open its borders to the outside world.
Limited security and sculptures lying unguarded in temple premises and community squares lured art smugglers to Nepal. Further, Nepal Police says it does not at present have the manpower to guard each temple and cultural site in the country.
“We have increased security in the Valley and mobilised our force to conduct night-time patrols in civilian clothes,” says Dinesh Raj Mainali of Nepal Police. “But our personnel is limited.”
Some temples have installed CCTV cameras. Yet, on 13 December, a statue of Narayan was wrenched out of the Bangalamukhi Temple in Lalitpur, just under the noses of policemen in a nearby post.
The thief was caught on 2 January and the statue has since been recovered, but it proved that police need to improve intelligence and get local communities involved in protecting their sacred objects.
“It starts with inventory," says Sanjay Adhikari: "We cannot protect our heritage when we don’t even know what we have.”
Nepal’s Ancient Monument Preservation Act, in 1956 calls for an inventory (see below). Similarly, the Monuments Preservation Rules, 1989 provides a format for recording, but no such list has been prepared yet. The Local Government Operation Act, 2017 and the Local Administration Act, 1971 handed the legal responsibility of making detailed inventory and making provisions for the promotion of local history and culture, including tangible and intangible heritages, to the local governments and Chief District Officers, but no action was taken.
This means statues are easily stolen and lost, without people even knowing that they are gone. There is also no strong legal provenance to claim an artefact when it is rediscovered at an auction house or museum.
Subhadra Bhattarai agrees that a national registry of Nepal’s cultural and historical artefacts is needed, and the department had begun drawing up a list in 2015. “But there are just too many smaller shrines, details and objects all over the country, and the department alone cannot complete the task with limited resources,” she adds.
The 1970 UNESCO Convention on the Means of Prohibiting and Preventing the Illicit Import, Export and Transfer of Ownership of Cultural Property, which Nepal ratified in 1976, calls for the up-to-date national inventory and educational awareness measures for the public about the value of cultural properties in their country.
Despite law and regulations that have been in place for six decades, the inability of local governments to come up with a list till today fosters an environment where theft and illicit trade of Nepal's cultural assets thrive. The National Penal Code 2017 defines offence as ‘an act punishable by Act or law’, while act itself encompasses a series of acts, as well as the ‘omission to do an act required by law to be done or commission of an act prohibited by law’— designating both the thief and those responsible for protecting the artefacts culpable when a religious object is stolen.
