The recovery and repatriation of an Indian idol was announced by the High Commission of India.
The goat-headed Yogini sculpture was illegally removed from a temple in Lokhari, Uttar Pradesh in the 1980s, and was sent back to India on Makar Sankranti.
According to a release by the High Commission of India London , the sculpture is of a goat-headed Yogini.
“Yoginis are powerful female divinities with a Tantric mode of worship. The goat-headed Yogini is now being repatriated to India and the sculpture originally belongs to a group of stone deities who are carved in sandstones”, as per the release. “The goat-headed Yogini sculpture will be dispatched to the Archeological Survey of India, New Delhi”, the release added.
The sculpture has been discovered in a garden in England. The goat-headed Yogini went missing from India in the 1980s and, as per the release, the sculpture had briefly surfaced in the art market in London in 1988.
Similarly, in 2013 a buffalo-headed sculpture, Vrishanana Yogini has been recovered and repatriated by the Embassy of India, Paris in 2013 and was sent to National Museum, New Delhi in 2013.