The United States of America has returned $10 million worth smuggled artifacts to India.
On Wednesday, November 13, the Manhattan District Attorney’s office made an announcement in which they stated that the US has handed over more that 1400 looted Indian cultural treasures that were worth $10 million to India.
This step comes as a part of a current initiative to repatriate the stolen art from countries across South and Southeast Asian, reported CNN.
The Manhattan District Attorney’s Office, in its press released, stated that the repatriations were an outcome of multiple ongoing investigations into looting networks including those that were conducted by indicted art traffickers Nancy Wiener and Subhash Kapoor.
Kapoor, who is an American antique dealer prisoned for 10 years, was charged for running a multimillion-dollar looting network through his New York gallery.
Among hundreds of returned artifacts, also included a sandstone sculpture of a Celestial Dancer that was stolen from a temple in early 1980s, a sculpture of the Tanesar Mother Goddess carved from a green-gray type of metamorphic rock which was reportedly looted in early 1960s from a northwestern Indian village.
“The two halves of the sculpture were illegally transported from London to New York by February 1992 under the instruction of Kapoor. After professional reassembly, the Celestial Dancer was donated to the Metropolitan Museum of Art by a client of Kapoor. It was displayed at the institution until its seizure by the ATU in 2023,” quoted Art News.
“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,” stated William S. Walker, Homeland Security Investigations New York Special Agent in Charge.
The 1400 antiquities were formally handed over to India in a ceremony at the Indian consulate in NYC on Wednesday.
