The Idol Wing office of the Tamil Nadu Police is situated in a building that is also the premises for the Economic Offences Wing and the Tamil Nadu State Highways office, in a congested corner of the SIDCO Industrial Estate located in Guindy. It is a Special Economic Zone, dedicated to the development of micro, small and medium industries by providing plots of land with the required infrastructure like roads, electric, water and sewage connection. Spread across four hundred and four acres, the SIDCO Industrial Estate in Guindy is a maze of small and large buildings, factories and workshops. Anyone unfamiliar with the place can easily get lost in the network of roads, streets, lanes and by-lanes that seem to twist and turn upon themselves, sending the unwary entrant on a circular merry-go-round.

But the auto rickshaw and the car had no trouble in negotiating the route as they entered the compound and came to a stop in front of a grey and white building. Everyone just got out silently and followed the men who led the way into the building and up a set of stairs. They were shown to a room that had the name plate which said ‘Tmt[1]. Chandra Moorthy, Inspector of Police’. They were shown chairs and were motioned to be seated. The fan was switched on and a few minutes later, a constable came in with a plate full of steaming hot masala vadas and three tetra packs of Amul Masti buttermilk. Vael and Sarayu immediately pounced on the vadas and started eating them, the sight of food making them realize the extent of their hunger. Muthuramalingam took only the tetra pack of buttermilk. The plate was emptied in a matter of minutes and the buttermilk followed suit. Vael and Sarayu felt refreshed, their bodies replenished with much needed energy. And as if on cue, Inspector Chandra Moorthy entered the room and went around and sat in her chair.

She took a long look at each one of them, her gaze lingering a few seconds longer on Sarayu.  

“So, you are the three musketeers”, she said.

Sarayu looked at her a little more deeply as she uttered the words. An inspector who knew about the three musketeers. Chandra Moorthy didn’t look very old, maybe in her early thirties, but she already had a look of confidence and authority stamped on her face.

As she did, the three men who had ‘kidnapped’ them entered the room and stood behind them at attention. The fourth one was missing.

“You seem to have a mean punch, Vael. Am I saying your name correctly?” she asked addressing Vael.

“Yes, you are. And thank you”, said Vael.

“I had to send my man to the hospital to get checked up”, she said.

Vael turned around and his eyes locked on to the man whose shin he had kicked hard.

“I’m sorry”, he apologized.

The man nodded with a smile, showing that he had no hard feelings about his encounter with him.

“That’s good fighting spirit, Vael. Don’t lose it”, said Inspector Chandra.

Vael nodded hesitantly. He didn’t know if she was joking or was serious.

“But it seems you stopped fighting as soon as Sarayu said something in your ear. What did she say? Some sort of mantra?” the Inspector asked with a smile.

“No, she said that the men were undercover police of the Idol Wing”, answered Vael.

The smile drained from the Inspector’s face. She looked sharply at the men standing behind them as if to ask if they were so sloppy as to be identified by a teenager.

“How did you know that, Sarayu?” she asked with genuine curiosity.

“Well, I had activated the Kavalan App[2] as they were getting Thaathaa and Vael. I knew that my phone location would be tracked and my microphone would be switched on by the police automatically once I pressed the SOS button. I also knew that the call to attend it will go to the nearest police patrol or police presence that is closest to my location. As my Thaathaa was getting pushed to the back seat of the car, I heard the crackle of your walkie-talkie from the auto rickshaw. That was enough to tell me that they were police. As to them being undercover police of the Idol Wing, who else would be there in front of a handicraft shop dressed in disguise? And also, they didn’t take any of our phones away from us. Real criminals would have done that first and foremost”, she finished.

Inspector Chandra couldn’t help but be impressed. Children these days were getting smarter, she thought.

“Why did you bring us here, Inspector?” asked Muthuramalingam, after being silent for all that while.

“Why did you have to literally kidnap us and bring us here? Did we commit any crime? We just went there to get a handicraft”, he said, raising his voice a little. He had waited to assess the situation before deciding on the tone to take with the police. It was beginning to be clear that the Idol Wing had no idea of what they had planned and executed and for what purpose.

Before Inspector Chandra could answer, the phone on her table rang and she answered it. “Yes, Sir”, was all she said as she got up and walked out the door, motioning for the men to bring them along.

The three of them got up without having to be told and followed the men who led them to a bigger room that had the name plate ‘Thiru[3]. Jananaathan, IPS, Addl. Director General of Police, Idol Wing CID’ on the door.

The three of them were shown inside and motioned to the chairs in front of the table where the Addl. DGP was seated.

The ADGP took a long look at the three of them and motioned for them to sit. The mood and the atmosphere immediately took a turn for the scary and formal.

“What were you three doing there in that shop?” he asked without any preamble, looking from one to the other, his gaze settling on Sarayu, his thought process picking her to be the weakest as she was the youngest. For the first time in a long time, his thought process would prove to be utterly and completely wrong.

“What anyone who goes to a handicraft store does, buying an art object”, she replied, without flinching.

The ADGP immediately knew that not only had he picked the wrong person, but he had picked the wrong tone.

“You are …” he said and Inspector Chandra immediately piped up saying, “She’s Sarayu, the boy is Vael and this is their grandfather Muthuramalingam”.

“Sir”, said Sarayu before the ADGP could say anything further. “We know that you have the whole of our life history in front of you in that file and we also know that you have gone through it. That was the delay that kept us waiting. Please afford us some intelligence. We would very much like to cooperate with you. We would have come to you ourselves tomorrow anyway. But we were brought here in this manner before that. Please ask us what you want and we will try to answer your questions”.

The ADGP looked at her with open surprise. Never had he had anyone talk to him that way, especially not a civilian. His hurt ego reared its head up to strike but then a sudden realization made him smile. If his people, the people for whose safety and wellbeing he was responsible for, had such a healthy attitude towards the police force, maybe there was some hope for the future after all, he thought.

“You are right, Sarayu. I’m sorry. We got off on the wrong foot. Let me start again. I’m Jananaathan, ADGP Idol Wing”, he said extended his hand to Sarayu who shook it firmly and said, “I’m Sarayu, Sir. Pleased to meet you”.

He introduced himself to Muthuramalingam and Vael and then he leaned back in his chair.

“You seem to be the spokesperson for the group, Sarayu. So, would you please tell me how you three came to be in that particular shop?” he asked.

“Before I answer that, may I know why you brought us here in the manner that you did? We were there just buying craft items”, she said.

The ADGP sighed. He found himself in a dilemma. He didn’t want to tell the group of people in front of him about his department’s activities, but he also knew that if he didn’t, then he wouldn’t know the things that the three of them sitting in front of them obviously did. He could have just used his police tone and authority to elicit the information from them, but two of them who were seated in front of him happened to be children. And that changed the whole ball game.

“Well Sarayu, I know I shouldn’t be divulging sensitive information to civilians, but in this case I feel obligated to do so. We had received a tip-off that a major black market buyer was coming to the shop to make a major deal. Our men must have mistook you for his entourage”.

“Us…black market buyers…?” asked Muthuramalingam incredulously. “Whatever made you think that?”

“Well, a foreigner with a translator in tow and a car with a call driver would make anyone think that”, answered the ADGP.

Sarayu turned and smiled at Vael. “We made you a black market dealer, Anna”, she said.

“Our disguise was more successful than we could have imagined”, answered Vael with a broader smile.

Even Muthuramalingam had to smile. That piece of conversation relaxed the tense atmosphere in the room.

“Now that you know the answer to your question, it’s your turn to answer ours”, said the ADGP.

“Fair enough”, said Sarayu and told him everything, starting with Daniel Wenham’s custody and ending with them being ‘kidnapped’.

Silence reigned in the room for a few minutes as the ADGP and the Inspector digested the information that had just been given to them. Both of them could not comprehend how a fifteen year old girl could have thought of such plans and executed them without fear. ‘Ilam kandru bayam ariyaathu’[4], thought Inspector Chandra, recollecting the Thamizh saying.

“So, we have the original bill of purchase and now we have the current invoice, typed in the same machine. You can now have a base document to compare the typeface. Shouldn't that be legally enough to get my Uncle Daniel out of trouble?” Sarayu finished.

“Excellent!” the word escaped the ADGP’s lips even before he realized that he had said it.

“You can have the Krishna carving and its bill now. We will come and handover the rest of the documents tomorrow. Of course, we would like a receipt for all that we are handing over to you”, she added, not showing any sign of having heard the ADGP’s exclamation.

Even Muthuramalingam looked at his granddaughter in awe. How could a fifteen-year-old brain think like this?

Once again silence fell over the room. The sound of the clock ticking could be heard clearly as thankfully, Vael piped up.

“May I ask something, Sir?” he asked the ADGP.

“Ah! The boy with the right hook! Are you a boxer by any chance?” the ADGP asked.

Vael shook his head.

“Well, maybe you should think of becoming one. It’s not easy to take down one of my men, you know”, he said with a smile.

“I’ll think about it, Sir”, answered Vael.

“So, tell me, what is it you wanted to ask?”

“Why did you say that the black market dealer was a foreigner? It’s the guys from here that do all the stealing and smuggling, right?”

“This is not just the guys from here or the guys from there, Vael. It’s a huge network which spreads across the globe. The guys from here, actually not just from here, but from any country like Italy, Egypt, and China, are the ‘sources’. They just ‘source’ the artefacts. There is a network that ships them out of these so called ‘source’ countries. Then they are sold to buyers from all over the world. Sometimes the objects don’t even reach the destination countries. They get inspected and sold at the shipping port itself. And then the buyers don’t even take them home to wherever they are. They store them in climate-controlled safe vaults and storage rooms in special trade zones called the Freeports. And they leave them there, sometimes for decades together, to avoid paying tax or for whatever reason. So you see, it is a global network that transcends countries”, explained the ADGP.

“How can people buy these art objects when they know that they are stolen?” Vael asked.

“Why do people commit crimes? If we can answer that, then maybe we can answer this too, Vael. No law is going to prevent some people from stealing and other people from buying what has been stolen”.

“Isn’t there anything that can be done, Sir?” asked Muthuramalingam. “If this goes on like this, then very soon our next generations will know nothing about our culture and heritage”, he asked his anguish obvious.

“We as law enforcement can only do so much, Mr. Muthuramalingam. But as public you can do a bit more to safeguard our heritage. Just taking a photograph of a cultural item or an antique like a statue or an idol and uploading the image with a geolocation tag can be so helpful in not just archiving and digitizing the object but also in identifying and recovering it in case of it being stolen.

Idol Wing has created a virtual museum of the recovered treasures that are with us. And we plan on expanding this virtual museum to include images of all the antique idols available throughout Tamil Nadu. We will be asking for volunteers to upload these images temple-wise, district-wise so that we will have a catalogue of all the idols and statues that are in all the temples in Tamil Nadu. Once this is uploaded and digitized, then anyone from anywhere in the world can visit this museum and see the idols in 3D”, explained the ADGP.

“And also”, he continued as his listeners showed keen interest in his words. “It stopped being about just art, culture and heritage a long time ago. Stolen artefacts and art have become closely linked with illegal and criminal activities, including money laundering and terrorism financing. It’s easier to pay someone in a painting or a statue than it is to pay in cash. It’s so much more difficult to trace these stolen items”, he explained.

A knock on the door put a stop to their conversation. One of the men entered and saluted smartly and held open the door. The two other men brought the Krishna idol that was in the trunk of the car and carefully placed it on the floor by the wall next to the ADGP’s chair.

“How much did you pay for this?” the ADGP asked looking at the carving.

“Six hundred and sixty Australian dollars, around thirty six thousand rupees”, answered Vael. “Will I be reimbursed for this?” he asked.

“I doubt it”, answered the ADGP.

“Sir, will there be a reward of some sort?” asked Sarayu, the talk of money triggering the question in her mind.

“There may be, I can’t say for sure”, answered the ADGP.

“If there is, could you please give it to Shanmugam Uncle at the typewriter service centre? None of this would have been possible if not for him”, she said.

“I’ll see what I can do, Sarayu”, he said as he got up to indicate the conclusion of the meeting.

“Give her my number, Chandra”, he instructed the Inspector as they were going out the door. “Don’t hesitate to call me if you need anything, Sarayu”, he said by way of good bye.

“Thank you, Sir”, said Sarayu, taken aback by the unexpected gesture. “My Uncle Daniel will be fine, right?” she asked him in a soft voice.

The ADGP patted her on the back reassuringly and said, “He will be”.

[1] Short for ‘Thirumathi’ meaning Mrs.

[2] A special app developed by the Tamil Nadu police to aid people of Tamil Nadu in case of emergencies

[3] Meaning Mr.

[4] ‘A young calf knows no fear’