The Manhattan District Attorney’s Office has returned 657 antiquities, collectively valued at nearly $14 million, to India following multiple investigations into international trafficking networks. District Attorney Alvin L Bragg Jr announced the restitution during a ceremony attended by Consul Rajlakshmi Kadam from the Consulate General of India in New York.
Authorities recovered the artefacts through ongoing probes into criminal networks linked to alleged trafficker Subhash Kapoor and convicted trafficker Nancy Wiener. Officials highlighted the scale of cultural theft targeting India, noting that more than 600 items were returned in this single operation.
“The scale of the trafficking networks that targeted cultural heritage in India is massive,” Bragg said, adding that further efforts are required to return stolen artefacts.
Consul General Binaya Pradhan acknowledged the role of US agencies, including the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office and the Department of Homeland Security, in recovering culturally significant objects.
Among the returned pieces is a bronze figure of Avalokiteshvara, valued at $2 million. The sculpture, originally housed in the Mahant Ghasidas Memorial Museum in Raipur, was stolen and smuggled into the United States by 1982 before being seized from a private New York collection in 2025.
Another major recovery includes a red sandstone Buddha statue worth $7.5 million. Smugglers transported the damaged statue into New York through Kapoor’s network, where authorities later seized it from a storage unit.
Officials also returned a sandstone statue of a dancing Ganesha, looted from a temple in Madhya Pradesh in 2000. Traffickers sold the piece through false provenance documents and auctioned it at Christie’s New York in 2012. A private collector later surrendered the artefact earlier this year.
For over a decade, the Antiquities Trafficking Unit (ATU), along with Homeland Security Investigations, has pursued Kapoor and his associates for allegedly looting and trafficking artefacts across South and Southeast Asia. Authorities issued an arrest warrant against Kapoor in 2012 and indicted him and seven co-defendants in 2019. Kapoor, convicted in India in 2022, remains pending extradition to the United States.
The ATU has recovered more than 6,200 cultural objects valued at over $485 million and returned over 5,900 items to 36 countries. The unit has secured 18 convictions in cultural property crimes, with seven additional suspects awaiting extradition.
Investigators from the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office, Homeland Security Investigations, and multiple analysts and legal teams led the operation, marking another significant step in global efforts to combat antiquities trafficking.
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Published By:
Akshat Trivedi
Published On:
Apr 30, 2026 07:01 IST
