INSUBCONTINENT EXCLUSIVE:
an English garden and are set to be returned to India.The two rare deities, Chamunda and Yogini Gomukhi, had been stolen from a temple in
Lokhari in Banda district of UP in the 1970s
It is believed they were stolen by a criminal network operating out of Rajasthan and Mumbai who plundered the temple and smuggled many of
the yoginis into the EU and UK via Switzerland in the 1970s and 1980s.The two idols are now in the possession of the Indian high commission
in London and a formal hand-over to the Indian government will take place there on Independence Day.Yoginis represent a group of powerful
female divinities, associated with the tantric mode of worship
They are worshiped as a group of 64 and are believed to possess infinite powers
The yoginis had been kept in a temple in Lokhari without a roof, door or lock as the belief is the deities commune with the heavens at
night.The temple was then plundered by robbers in the 1970s
surfaced in Paris in 2013.These latest two yoginis were purchased in March 2023 by a UK-based salvage company from another woman who kept
them in a shed at the back of her garden in England
stolen art to date.He contacted S
Vijay Kumar, co-founder of the India Pride Project, who confirmed they were the missing yoginis from Lokhari and provided the necessary
It is a common problem in the UK as a former colonial power that a lot of sculptures and looted art makes its way to British country
rituals associated with them
They are not practised much nowadays as so many yoginis have vanished, so these ones are the last remnants of a particular form of esoteric
