The United States has returned more than 1,400 looted artifacts worth $10 million to India as part of an ongoing initiative to repatriate stolen art from countries across South and Southeast Asia, the Manhattan District Attorneyâs office announced Wednesday.
The trafficked goods recovered include items that, until recently, were on view at New Yorkâs Metropolitan Museum of Art. Among them is a sandstone sculpture of a celestial dancer that was smuggled from central India to London, before being illegally sold to one of the Metâs patrons and donated to the museum.
The repatriations resulted from âseveral ongoing investigationsâ into looting networks, including those operated by convicted art traffickers Nancy Wiener and Subhash Kapoor, an American antiquities dealer who was sentenced to 10 years in jail for running a multimillion-dollar looting network through his New York gallery, the Manhattan District Attorneyâs Office said in press release.
Kapoor was sent to face charges in Indiaâs Tamil Nadu state following his arrest in Germany in 2011. The DAâs office obtained an arrest warrant for him in 2012though he remains in custody in India, pending his extradition to the US.
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âTodayâs repatriation marks another victory in what has been a multiyear international investigation into antiquities trafficked by one of historyâs most prolific offenders,â William Walker, the federal Homeland Security Investigationâs New York special agent in charge, said in a press statement.
The items were formally returned at a ceremony at the Indian consulate in New York Wednesday.
Since its creation over a decade ago, the Manhattan District Attorneyâs Antiquities Trafficking Unit ââ a task force of lawyers, investigators and art experts ââ has recovered 5,800 antiquities valued at almost $460 million. The unit has also convicted 16 people of trafficking offenses and filed for the extradition of six others linked to stolen cultural property.
In July, the US and India signed an agreement to protect cultural property by preventing illegal trades and streamlining the process of returning stolen antiquities back to India.
