The United States on Wednesday announced that it has returned over 1,400 looted artefacts worth $10 million to India as part of an ongoing initiative to repatriate stolen art from countries across South and Southeast Asia.
The recovered looted goods include artefacts that were, until recently, on display at the New York Metropolitan Museum of Art, CNN reported. Among those returned is a sandstone sculpture of a celestial dancer, an artefact smuggled from central India to London before being illegally sold to one of the Met’s patrons and donated to the Museum.
The Manhattan District Attorney’s office, in a press release, said that the goods were recovered as part of an “ongoing investigations into criminal trafficking networks”, including those operated by convicted art traffickers Subhash Kapoor and Nancy Wiener. Kapoor is an American antiquities dealer who was sent to 10 years in prison for running a multimillion-dollar looting network with the front of his New York gallery.
Following his arrest in Germany, Kapoor was sent to India to face charges in the matter. The DA’s office obtained an arrest for him in 2012, however, Kapoor is in custody in India following his conviction for antiquities trafficking in 2022. His extradition is pending still.
Homeland Security Investigations New York Special Agent in Charge William S Walker, in press statement according to Manhattan DA’s office, said, “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.”
According to CNN, the looted artefacts were formally handed back to India at a ceremony at New York’s Indian consulate on Wednesday.
Notably, India and the US signed the first ever “Cultural Property Agreement” in July to prevent and control the illicit trafficking of antiquities from India to the US. According to a press release from the Indian Ministry of Culture, the agreement was signed by the ministry’s secretary Govind Mohan and Ambassador of the US to India, HE Eric Garcetti.
In September, the United States returned 297 stolen or trafficked antiquities to India. These artefacts belong to a time period ranging almost 4000 years, from 2000 BCE – 1900 CE and have origins in different parts of India. “Majority of the antiquities are terracotta artefacts from Eastern India, while others are made in stone, metal, wood and ivory and belong to different parts of the country,” a press release from the Ministry of External Affairs.
The statement said that the total number of cultural artefacts returned from US to India since 2016 stands at 578. “This is the maximum number of cultural artefacts returned by any country to India,” the release added.