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Judge to probe 'recovery' of Vijayawada temple ornaments

Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister N Chandrababu Naidu today ordered a judicial probe into the theft of the ornaments from the Kanakadurga temple in Vijayawada and their recovery.

In a statement, Naidu said a judicial inquiry was ordered as doubts had arisen in the public mind regarding the genuineness of the ornaments recovered by the police. No leniency could be shown in the matter as it involved religious sentiments, he added.

The police arrested one Prakash Kumar Sahu in Visakhapatnam on June 30, accusing him of being responsible for the theft. They claimed to have recovered the stolen ornaments from him.

However, Sahu told the fifth metropolitan magistrate in Vijayawada, where he was produced, that he was falsely implicated in the case and that the police did not recover anything from him.

The keeritam (crown) of the deity and other ornaments produced by the police were made recently by a goldsmith at Tenali in Guntur district, he claimed.

UNI

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