The statue of Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj, stolen from Guadalupe River Park in San Jose City has been found. Raj Chahal, councilmember of District 2, San Jose, told indica: ”I have good news! The Shivaji statue has been found.”
A 440-pound metal statue has disappeared from Guadalupe River Park, dismaying community members who treasure it as an important symbol of friendship between San Jose and its sister city of Pune in western India.
And in a wild twist of events, it turns out it’s the second time the statue has been snatched.
Standing approximately 4 feet tall atop a large concrete cube, the statue features a 1600s-era Indian ruler Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj heroically riding a horse with his outstretched hand grasping a sword. Two plaques are affixed on the statue’s base and a pole that rotates the flags of India and San Jose stands nearby—all of which have been removed until the artwork is, hopefully, recovered.
The statue was first reported missing on Jan. 31, sawed off at the horses’ hooves. Police said Wednesday they have no suspects.
The statue’s subject, known best as the founder of India’s Maratha Empire, is still celebrated widely across the world, with an event paying tribute to the 17th-century figure coming up in just a few weeks in Los Angeles. Many who visit San Jose from India come to view the artwork, city officials said.
“People are very upset,” said San Jose resident Sunil Ganu, who helped facilitate the statue’s transfer from Pune in 1999. “A lot of people have an emotional attachment to that statue.”
He said he is bewildered by how the crime was pulled off. When the city installed the statue in 2002, Ganu remembers crews using a small crane to hoist it onto its base.
“You’d have to have a really big saw to cut off the legs,” he said. “They’re three to four inches in diameter.”
The statue’s origins — and its first theft — date back to 1992, when San Jose first became a sister city with Pune, an inland city of 4 million in the state of Maharashtra. As a gift to San Jose, now-deceased sculptor B.R. Khedkar sent the statue over to the city seven years later.
Suneel Kelkar, president of the San Jose-Pune sister city organization, said he remembers when it arrived in the United States. He carried the “very heavy” sculpture with the help of three other people from a truck on the street to his garage. He stored it temporarily until the city installed it.
But that summer, Kelkar’s home was burglarized, and thieves took the statue.
“They thought this was an artifact,” recalls Kelkar, who now lives in Santa Clara. “We suspect they were some drunk kids.”
From left: Suneel Kelkar, President of San Jose-Pune Sister City Organization, Former Mayor Ron Gonzales and Vijay Pendse stand with the Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj statue in 1999. The small 440-pound statue was reported missing at Guadalupe River Park on Jan. 31. (Courtesy Suneel Kelkar)
A couple of months later, police recovered the sculptor after a jogger found it on a trail in San Jose, Kelkar said. It had only minor damage, with a few scuffs, thought the sword was missing, requiring about $1,500 in repairs. The statue then was given to the city and installed in Guadalupe River Park near Taylor Street. The statue was again repaired a couple of years later after it rusted, at a cost of $3,000, according to Kelkar.
And if you thought this caper couldn’t get any stranger, there’s one more mystery that’s unsolved.
The city’s International Affairs Manager Joe Hedges said Wednesday that his records from the 1990s show the statue is made of bronze. But last summer, a city employee found a piece had fallen off of it, an unusual occurrence for a bronze statue, according to Hedges. It’s led the city to think it is made out of some other type of metal. Kelkar believes that the statue is made of iron.
in San Jose, Calif., on Feb. 8, 2023. The statue was reported missing on Jan. 31. The aftermath shows that the statue, an Indian ruler from the 1600s of a man riding a horse, was sawed off at the horse’s hooves. (Dai Sugano/Bay Area News Group)
