A man obsessed with holy statues has been arrested for theft:

He admits to the allegations.

“The statues looked so lonely, I wanted to take them in and look after them,” he told the police.

Suzuki has five degrees – at least one of them in a postgraduate course — in various types of Buddhism studies. He claims to be able to communicate with the statues.

“If I talk to them, they answer me,” police quoted him as saying. “If they tell me they’re cold, I give them clothes to wear.”

Police said the specific charges for which Suzuki was arrested involved the thefts of statues from Buddhist temples in Hanno on Dec. 20, Jan. 5 and Jan. 20.

Police said that Suzuki has stolen 61 statues with a combined value of around 10 million yen from temples and churches in Tokyo, and the surrounding prefectures of Saitama, Chiba and Kanagawa since around the spring of 2005.