Looted decades ago, 1,400 antiquities worth $10 mn given to India

A sandstone sculpture looted from Madhya Pradesh in 1980s and another in green-grey schist looted from Rajasthan in 1960s are among over 1,400 antiquities collectively valued at $10 million that the US has returned to India.

More than 600 more antiquities looted from India are scheduled to be repatriated in coming months. The pieces were returned at a ceremony with Manish Kulhary from the Consulate General of India here and Alexandra deArmas, Group Supervisor from the Homeland Security Investigation of New York Cultural Property, Art, and Antiquities Group, according to a statement from Manhattan District Attorney Alvin L Bragg, Jr.

At least 1,440 antiquities collectively valued at $10 million were returned to India at the event, Bragg said in a statement. The sandstone sculpture depicting a celestial dancer was looted from a temple in Madhya Pradesh in the early 1980s. The looters had cleaved the sculpture into two halves to facilitate smuggling and illicit sale and by February 1992, the two halves were illegally imported from London into New York, professionally reassembled, and donated to the Metropolitan Museum of Art (Met). It remained on display at the Met, until it was seized by the Antiquities Traffic Unit (ATU) in 2023.

The second sculpture, Tanesar Mother Goddess, carved from green-gray schist, was looted from a village of Tanesara-Mahadeva in Rajasthan.

First documented in the late 1950s by an Indian archaeologist along with 11 other sculptures of mother goddesses, Tanesar Mother Goddess and her fellow mother goddesses were stolen one evening in the early 1960s, the statement said.

By 1968, the Tanesar Mother Goddess was in a Manhattan gallery and after passing through two other collectors in New York, the Met accessioned the Tanesar Mother Goddess in 1993, where it remained on display until it was seized by the ATU in 2022, it added. These antiquities were recovered under several ongoing investigations into criminal trafficking networks, including those of alleged antiquities trafficker Subhash Kapoor and convicted trafficker Nancy Wiener, the statement added.

“We will continue to investigate the many trafficking networks that have targeted Indian cultural heritage,” Bragg said.