Months after London pledged to send back the 10th-century idol of the Goat-headed Yogini, the idol has finally landed in India. It was repatriated in March this year, and finally landed in Indian in July. It is now housed at the Purana Qila.
The idol was removed illegally from a temple in Lokhari village in Banda district in Uttar Pradesh and was discovered in England over 40 years ago. The idol is made of stone and is named Vrishanana Yogini, it was part of the Yogini temple in Chitrakoot.
The Archaeological Survey of India has now kept the idol in the Purana Qila museum, and officials said that there are plans to exhibit to visitors soon.
The idol was given to the High Commission of India in London in January this year. “It is learned that the sculpture had briefly surfaced in the art market in London in 1988. In October 2021, High Commission of India received information about the finding of a goat-headed Yogini Sculpture that had matched the description of the Lokhari set, in the garden of a private residence near London," the ministry of culture has said in a statement in January this year.
In 2013, another statue from the same temple – a sculpture of the buffalo-headed Vrishanana Yogini, was from Paris, and repatriated by the Indian Embassy in Paris.
Published 10 August 2022, 17:45 IST