The United States said Wednesday that it had returned more than 1,400 stolen artifacts valued at $10 million to India as part of a continuous effort to repatriate stolen art from nations around South and Southeast Asia.
CNN reports that pieces that were previously on display at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York are among the recovered trafficking goods. One of them is a sandstone sculpture of a heavenly dancer that was illegally sold to a Met patron and then gifted to the museum after being transported to London from central India.
In a press release, the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office said that the reparations resulted from “several ongoing investigations” into looting networks, including those operated by convicted art traffickers Nancy Wiener and Subhash Kapoor, an antiquities dealer who was sentenced to 10 years in jail for running a multimillion-dollar looting network through his New York gallery.
After his arrest in Germany in 2011, Subhash Kapoor was sent to face charges in Tamil Nadu. The US Da’s office obtained an arrest warrant for him in 2012, however, he remains in custody in India, pending his extradition to the US.
“Today’s repatriation marks another victory in what has been a multiyear international investigation into antiquities trafficked by one of history’s most prolific offenders,” William Walker, the federal Homeland Security Investigation’s New York special agent in charge, said in a press statement, per CNN.
The US has returned 297 stolen antiquities to India, marking the largest number of cultural artefacts returned by any country to India since 2016. The items, which date back almost 4000 years, were primarily terracotta artefacts from Eastern India, but also included stone, metal, wood, and ivory.
The US government has facilitated the return of a large number of trafficked or stolen antiquities since 2016, with 10 antiquities returned during Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s visit to the US in June 2016. Since 2016, the total number of cultural artefacts returned from the US to India has reached 578, making it the maximum number returned by any country to India. The US and India signed an agreement in July to protect cultural property and streamline the process of returning stolen antiquities.
Get the latest news updates and stay informed with FELA NEWS!
Source: NDTV
