India, April 12 -- The Solapur district administration has cracked down on local authorities for their failure to prevent the sudden appearance of statues of Maratha kings Chhatrapati Shivaji and Chhatrapati Sambhaji, which surfaced across Marathwada and Western Maharashtra in the last six weeks.

Statues of the kings started cropping up mysteriously and, often, overnight, leaving the police baffled, until they arrested a controversial social activist and self-styled "devotee of Shivaji Maharaj", Balraje Aware-Patil, in Solapur last week. Police say Aware-Patil is responsible for the sudden surge in statues, which were swiftly installed - illegally - under the cover of darkness all across the region.

Aware-Patil, they said, had crowd-fun...