12 statues from a Chinese temple in Ayer Keroh, Melaka, were allegedly stolen and thrown into the ocean. The temple managed to locate and recover 4 of the statues, one of which was severely damaged, while the other 3 were successfully restored.
According to a report by China Press, a representative of the temple explained that the incident took place on Thursday (June 12). The staff of the temple were closing up the gates of the temple at around 7pm, when they noticed that some statues had gone missing.
Upon checking the CCTV footage, they noticed that a middle-aged man living nearby had packed up the statues in 3 boxes and drove away with them at around 3pm the same day.
One of the statues stolen didn’t belong to the temple and was temporarily placed there by a local resident for relocation purposes.
They found out what happened to the statues with the help of the police
With the assistance of the police, the temple’s board of directors spoke to the man involved and found out that the statues were thrown into the ocean.
The board of directors went to the location to look for the statues. Residents also confirmed that they witnessed the situation.
“We started the search that night and received assistance from many parties, including a Chinese man named Wu Tianfu (transliteration), who contacted his friends to send out fishing boats to search for the statues after learning about the situation,”
“We are very grateful to Mr. Wu, as well as other ethnic groups and hawkers for their enthusiastic help.”
He also pointed out that one of the fishing boats was about to end their search at 11pm that day when they found one of the statues that had profound significance to the temple.
“We spent a total of 3 days searching, with the directors patrolling the beach in batches during the day and at night. The next day, we successfully found 3 more statues, but the whereabouts of the rest are still unknown,” the representative said.
They experienced losses of up to RM30,000
While 3 of the recovered statues have been successfully restored, the other cannot be restored. The temple will also repurchase some of the statues that were not recovered, for which they have estimated their losses to be between RM20,000 and RM30,000.
While all of this is happening, the temple has remained open to worshippers.
However, it is not mentioned whether action is being taken against the man who stole the statues from the temple.
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