cant step in an ongoing effort to repatriate stolen art from South and Southeast Asia. According to the Leaders Asia sources, the Manhattan District Attorney’s office made the announcement on Wednesday, revealing that among the recovered items were pieces once displayed at the prestigious Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. One notable artifact is a sandstone sculpture of a celestial dancer, which was illegally smuggled from central India to London, before being sold to a Met patron and eventually donated to the museum.
The repatriations are the result of multiple investigations into international looting networks, including those run by convicted traffickers Nancy Wiener and Subhash Kapoor, the latter an antiquities dealer sentenced to 10 years in prison for orchestrating a multimillion-dollar trafficking operation. As per the Leaders Asia sources, Kapoor, arrested in Germany in 2011, faces charges in India and is currently awaiting extradition to the United States.
Wednesday’s repatriation ceremony took place at the Indian consulate in New York, with officials celebrating another major milestone in the fight against art trafficking. Since the formation of the Manhattan District Attorney’s Antiquities Trafficking Unit over a decade ago, the task force has recovered 5,800 stolen artifacts worth nearly $460 million and secured convictions for 16 individuals involved in trafficking. The unit has also filed for the extradition of six more suspects.
In July, the US and India further strengthened their cultural property protection efforts by signing an agreement aimed at curbing illegal trades and simplifying the process of returning stolen antiquities.
