Based on true events
In December 2013, a guard outside a mountain shrine in Phnom Penh, Cambodia was woken by a barking dog and found the lock to the shrine’s door broken and their sacred golden urn, missing.
They said that the urn contained the hair, teeth, and bones of Buddha’s body and had been respected by Buddhist followers for thousands of years.
Relics such as this one, have enormous religious and cultural significance for Cambodians. The golden urn is believed to have been brought from Sri Lanka to Cambodia in the 1950’s to celebrate 2,500 years since Buddha’s birth. In 2002, Norodom Sihanouk who was the king at the time, moved the relic forty-five kilometers away, from the capital city Phnom Penh to Oudong. Tens of thousands of religious followers attended the ceremony in honor of their king and Buddha.
But the unexpected theft of this sacred relic sparked a nationwide manhunt and prompted an outcry amongst Buddhists across Cambodia. There were those followers who doubted it was the original holy urn, to begin with, and insisted on proof of its authenticity.
Police officials interrogated thirteen of the guards and subsequently detained six of them.
A mere two months after its disappearance, authorities found the missing golden urn during a house raid in Oudong, about 130 kilometers from the shrine where it got stolen.
However, to this day, none of the detainees delivered the mastermind or motives behind the theft of the golden urn.
The urn’s authenticity is still in doubt and has never been proven.
For more on the golden urn and its significance, please visit www.
