The four youths who had vandalised pillars in Hampi's Vishnu temple complex, reportedly re-erected them after being ordered by the court hearing their case to do so.
The punishment was meted out by Judge Poornima Yadav of the Judicial Magistrate First Class (JMFC) Court in Hosapete. Not only were they each reportedly fined Rs 70,000, but they were also made to give assurances to the court that they would not repeat such a mistake again.
They were released after the payment of the fine.
The four accused – Ayush from Madhya Pradesh, Raja Babu Chowdary, Raj Aryan and Rajesh Kumar Chowdary from Bihar – had filmed their act of toppling the pillars in a video that was shared widely.
They Were Arrested After the Video Went Viral
The police, however, took a stringent view of the matter and formed four teams to track down and arrest the accused persons. They were arrested on 7 February, a week after the video had gone viral.
They were taken to the same spot once again and made to help raise the pillars in the presence of officials from the Archaelogical Survey of India (ASI) and Hampi police, among others.
"The maximum punishment for the act is two years imprisonment or a fine up to Rs 1 lakh. Offenders will have to serve the jail term if they are unable to pay the fine. The judge ordered them to pay the fine and they were released after they re-erected the pillar,” Additional Public Prosecutor Geetha Mirajkar told The New Indian Express.
The video had sparked outrage on social media.
The police registered an FIR against the four youths following a complaint filed by the ASI's Arun Rangarajan in Hampi Police Station. "We immediately formed teams to track them and arrest them. They were in different places - Bengaluru, Hyderabad, Madhya Pradesh, but we managed to find them and arrest them within a week of the video going viral. They told us that they were not aware of the archaeological importance of the pillars and that they toppled them just for fun," a police inspector at Hampi told TNM.
(Published in an arrangement with The News Minute)
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