A man has been detained on suspicion of attempting to loot the historic Tomb of Chen Hsien (陳顯墓) in Kinmen County, which dates back to the year 1403.
The Kinmen District Prosecutors’ Office said it established a task force to investigate a suspected grave robbery in the outlying county after it was reported damaged on Monday last week.
The tomb is the resting place of the island’s first man to pass the Ming Dynasty imperial exam, and is recognized as one of Kinmen’s “four famous graves.”
Photo: Wu Cheng-ting, Taipei Times
During the Tomb Sweeping Festival earlier this month, members of the Chen clan discovered a large hole had been smashed into the tomb’s shell, prosecutors said.
The robber did not manage to break into the inner burial chamber, which is made from traditional clay mixed with glutinous rice, they added.
The suspect, surnamed Lee (李), is an unemployed man in his 20s from Changhua County who visited Kinmen in February, where he inspected four to five tomb sites before selecting the Chen Hsien tomb as his target, they said.
He was arrested yesterday and taken in for questioning, with police confiscating suspected grave-robbing tools. they added.
Prosecutors said they requested his detention on suspicion of theft and destruction of property under the Criminal Code, plus contraventions of the Cultural Heritage Preservation Act (文化資產保存法).
Kinmen County Commissioner Chen Fu-hai (陳福海) yesterday personally visited the Kinmen County Police Bureau’s Jinhu Precinct to reward the officers for solving the case within 10 days.
Police identified various challenges in the investigation, such as the remote location with little foot traffic and no surveillance cameras.
They instead relied on collecting physical evidence at the scene and reviewing months of surveillance footage from a nearby intersection.
Additional reporting by CNA
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