US returns over 650 antiquities valued at nearly $ 14 mn to India

PTI

New York

The US has returned 657 antiquities collectively valued at nearly USD 14 million to India, saying there is “more work to be done” to return stolen artifacts to the country.

The return was announced by Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg on Tuesday.

The pieces were recovered following several investigations into trafficking networks, including those related to disgraced art dealer Subhash Kapoor and convicted trafficker Nancy Wiener.

The pieces were returned at an event attended by Consul Rajlakshmi Kadam from the Consulate General of India in New York.

“The scale of the trafficking networks that targeted cultural heritage in India is massive, as demonstrated by the return of more than 600 pieces today,” Bragg said in a statement. “There is unfortunately more work to be done to return stolen artifacts back to India, and I thank our team for their persistent efforts.”

Consul General of India in New York, Binaya Pradhan, appreciated the sustained cooperation of the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office, the US Department of Homeland Security, and the law enforcement agencies whose “continued vigilance,” he said, “made the recovery and return of these culturally significant artifacts possible.”

The items returned include a two million dollar bronze figure of ‘Avalokiteshvara’, seated on an inscribed double-lotus base over a lion-flanked throne.

The inscription identifies the craftsman as Dronaditya of Sipur, located near modern-day Raipur in Chhattisgarh.

The Avalokiteshvara was one of a large hoard of bronzes discovered near the Lakshmana Temple in 1939 and entered the collection of the Mahant Ghasidas Memorial Museum, Raipur by 1952.

The statue was stolen from the museum and smuggled into the US by 1982, ultimately ending up in a private collection in New York by 2014. The bronze artifact was located and seized from that collection by the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office in 2025.

A sandstone figure of a dancing ‘Ganesha’, which was looted by one of Kapoor’s indicted co-conspirators Ranjeet Kanwar, from a temple in Madhya Pradesh in 2000. Convicted trafficker Vaman Ghiya then sold and shipped the statue to the New York-based gallery owner Doris Wiener.

In 2012, after the death of her mother Doris, Nancy Wiener – later convicted for antiquities trafficking – knowingly created false provenance for the ‘Ganesha’ statue, consigning it to, and selling it at, Christie’s New York.

The ‘Ganesha’ was purchased at the 2012 auction by a private collector who surrendered it to the Manhattan District Attorney’s office earlier this year.

Another artifact is a red sandstone figure of a Buddha standing with his right hand raised in ‘abhaya mudra’, a gesture of protection. The Buddha’s feet are broken off below the knees and only fragments of the halo behind his head are visible, damage that likely occurred when the statue was looted from Northern India.

The USD 7.5 million-statue was smuggled into New York by Kapoor and was seized by the Antiquities Trafficking Unit from one of his New York storage units.

For more than a decade, the District Attorney’s Antiquities Trafficking Unit, along with law enforcement partners at Homeland Security Investigations, have investigated Kapoor and his co-conspirators for the alleged illegal looting, exportation, and sale of artifacts from numerous countries in South and Southeast Asia.

The DA’s Office obtained an arrest warrant for Kapoor in 2012. In November 2019, he and seven of his co-defendants were indicted for their conspiracy to traffic stolen antiquities.

Kapoor’s extradition from India, where he was convicted for his trafficking activities in 2022, is pending. Five of Kapoor’s co-defendants have already been convicted by the Manhattan District Attorney’s office.

The Antiquities Trafficking Unit has now recovered more than 6,200 cultural treasures, including rare books, works of art, and antiquities, valued at more than USD 485 million, and returned more than 5,900 of those so far to 36 countries.

The ATU has also convicted 18 individuals of cultural property-related crimes, with another 7 alleged traffickers pending extradition.