Brief by Shorts91 Newsdesk / 07:45pm on 15 Nov 2023,Wednesday India Global
External Affairs Minister Dr S Jaishankar attended the repatriation ceremony of Yogini Chamunda and Yogini Gomukhi, two 8th-century temple idols stolen from Uttar Pradesh's Lokhari, in London on November 11, 2023. The EAM wrote on the social media handle X: "Pleased to participate in the return to India of the stone idols of Yogini Chamunda and Gomukhi. Appreciate @HCI_London and UK authorities for their efforts in this regard." The two sculptures of Yogini Camunda and Yogini Gomukhi, two female deities, were looted sometime between 1979 and 1982 from a temple in the village of Lokhari, in the northern state of Uttar Pradesh. They were likely taken by an illegal smuggling network operating out of Rajasthan and Mumbai, according to the Times of India. The pair of yoginis were recovered in March after an English woman sold the contents of her garden shed wholesale to a salvage company, which had initially planned to sell the statues but first decided to investigate their provenance.
