LONDON: Two “priceless” 10th-century CE yogini stone idols that were looted from a temple in Uttar Pradesh have been discovered in a shed in 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.

Several yoginis from it remain missing but four have been found — one in Paris, and the other three in the UK.

The goat-headed yogini was found in a woman’s garden in the UK in December 2021 when she was selling her house and the ram-headed yogini 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.

“The salvage company was going to sell them but decided to check out the provenance of the idols first and contacted an art historian who reached out to me,” said Chris Marinello, CEO and founder of Art Recovery International, who has repatriated more than $600 million worth of 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 documents.

“As soon as I told them it was stolen, they were extraordinarily cooperative and handed themover to me.

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 houses,” Marinello said.“The goat-headed one was priced at £35k to £50k in the 1980s when it was put up for auction at Sotheby’s before it was pulled from sale.

This means they would be worth millions now,” said Kumar, whose project aims to restore India’s lost heritage.

“Robbers know they can sell them for millions.

To me they are priceless.

The Lokhari temple lies in ruins, with just a few broken yoginis now."“The villagers are fed up as the temple keeps getting robbed.

The remaining yoginis have been removed from the temple and are in the possession of the police or villagers,” Kumar said.The goat-headed yogini is currently in the National Museum in New Delhi and that is where these two are likely to end up, he said.“Each yogini has specific 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 worship.

If the site were to become secure, it would be a major tourist site and the whole village could prosper,” Kumar said.