1,440 smuggled antiquities seized by US authorities returned to India

The artefacts were returned at a ceremony to India's Consulate General represented by Consul Manish Kulhary by Alexandra de Armas, the Homeland Security Investigation (HSI) Group Supervisor, the prosecutor's office said

New York: Manhattan prosecutor Alvin Bragg has returned to India 1,440 antiquities which include sacred temple sculptures that had been smuggled to the US.

The artefacts were returned at a ceremony to India’s Consulate General represented by Consul Manish Kulhary by Alexandra de Armas, the Homeland Security Investigation (HSI) Group Supervisor, the prosecutor’s office said on Thursday.

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“We will continue to investigate the many trafficking networks that have targeted Indian cultural heritage,” Bragg said.

The pieces were recovered during investigations into criminal trafficking networks, including those of antiquities traffickers Subash Kapoor, who has been convicted in India, and Nancy Wiener, convicted in the US, according to the prosecutor’s office.

“Today’s repatriation marks another victory in what has been a multi-year, international investigation into antiquities trafficked by one of history’s most prolific offenders,” HSI New York Special Agent in Charge William S. Walker said.

Some of the antiques had been on display in museums until they were seized by the Manhattan prosecutor’s Antiquities Traffic Unit (ATU). They are valued at $10 million.

A warrant has been issued in New York for the arrest of Kapoor, the alleged ring leader of the antiquities smugglers network and his extradition from India is pending, according to the prosecutor’s office.

One of the returned sculptures depicts a Celestial Dancer and it was looted from a temple in Madhya Pradesh in the early 1980s. Looters cut it into two and smuggled it to New York via London for sale.

One of Kapoor’s clients donated it to the New York Metropolitan Museum (Met) from where it was seized by the ATU in 2023.

Another was the Tanesar Mother Goddess looted from the village of Tanesara-Mahadeva in Rajasthan in the early 1960s and ended up with Wiener at her New York gallery.

After passing through two collectors, it was added by the Met to its collection in 1993 and the ATU seized it in 2022. These antiquities were the latest in a series of efforts by US authorities to reunite stolen artefacts with India.

During his visit to Washington, Prime Minister Narendra Modi had thanked President Joe Biden for returning the antiquities and said, “For us, these are not just art but part of our heritage, culture and religion. So when this lost heritage returns home, they will be received with a lot of emotion.”

Soon after, 105 antiquities were handed over to India by the Manhattan prosecutor’s office.

In 2022, Bragg handed over 307 items valued at about $4 million to the consulate general. Bragg said at that time, “Kapoor was one of the world’s most prolific antiquities traffickers.”

 Kapoor, who ran an art gallery in New York, was arrested in Germany in 2011 in an operation known as Operation Hidden Idol and extradited to India. He was sentenced in 2022 by a court in Kumbakonam, Tamil Nadu, to a 10-year prison term for the theft of a religious statue from a temple.