Pictured: “Celestial Dancer”

Manhattan District Attorney Alvin L. Bragg, Jr., today announced the return of 1,440 antiquities collectively valued at $10 million to the people of India. The pieces were recovered pursuant to several ongoing investigations into criminal trafficking networks, including those of alleged antiquities trafficker SUBHASH KAPOOR and convicted trafficker NANCY WIENER. The pieces were returned at a ceremony with Manish Kulhary from the Consulate General of India in New York and Alexandra deArmas, Group Supervisor from the Homeland Security Investigation, New York Cultural Property, Art, and Antiquities Group.

“We will continue to investigate the many trafficking networks that have targeted Indian cultural heritage” said District Attorney Bragg. “I thank our team of prosecutors and analysts, along with our partners at HSI, for their continued commitment to returning stolen and looted artifacts.”

“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. HSI New York and our colleagues at the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office have worked tirelessly with our partners in India and beyond to disrupt and dismantle the smuggling networks and in turn recover these invaluable pieces,” said HSI New York Special Agent in Charge William S. Walker. “While our work continues, we remain resolute in our commitment to safeguard against the plundering of antiquities and guarantee that those who seek to gain from these heinous acts are held fully accountable.”

Among the pieces being returned today:

• A sandstone sculpture depicting a Celestial Dancer, which was looted from a temple in Madhya Pradesh, India, in the early 1980’s.  While prying the delicately carved statue from the temple pillar it once adorned, looters cleaved the Celestial Dancer into two halves to facilitate its smuggling and illicit sale. By February 1992, the two halves were illegally imported from London into New York at the direction of SUBHASH KAPOOR, professionally reassembled, and donated to the Met by a client of KAPOOR.  The Celestial Dancer remained on display at the Met, until it was seized by the ATU in 2023.

The Tanesar Mother Goddess, carved from green-gray schist and looted from the village of Tanesara-Mahadeva in Rajasthan, India. First documented in the late 1950s by an Indian archaeologist along with 11 other sculptures of mother goddesses, the Tanesar Mother Goddess and her fellow mother goddesses were stolen one evening in the early 1960s. By 1968, the Tanesar Mother Goddess was in the possession of Doris Wiener at her Manhattan gallery. 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.

 

Pictured: “Tanesar Mother Goddess”

For more than a decade, the District Attorney’s Antiquities Trafficking Unit, along with law enforcement partners at Homeland Security Investigations, have investigated KAPOOR and his co-conspirators for the alleged illegal looting, exportation, and sale of artifacts from numerous countries in South and Southeast Asia. The D.A.’s Office obtained an arrest warrant for KAPOOR in 2012. [1]

KAPOOR’s extradition from India, where he was convicted for his trafficking activities in 2022, is pending.

The investigation has led to the convictions of five individuals.

During District Attorney Bragg’s tenure, the ATU has recovered just over 2,100 antiquities stolen from more than 30 countries and valued at almost $230 million. Since its creation, the ATU has convicted 16 defendants for cultural property trafficking offenses, filed extraditions for 6 others, recovered 5,800 antiquities valued at almost $460 million, and returned more than 4,600 to more than 25 countries. Almost 1,000 antiquities are scheduled to be repatriated in the coming months, including more than 600 antiquities that had been looted from India and recovered earlier this year.

Assistant District Attorney Matthew Bogdanos, Chief of the Antiquities Trafficking Unit and Senior Trial Counsel, and former Supervising Investigative analyst Apsara Iyer conducted the investigations along with Assistant District Attorney Jacqueline Studley; Investigative Analyst Charlotte Looram, Hilary Chassé, and Grace Vieaux; District Attorney Investigator John Paul Labbat; and Special Agents Robert Fromkin and Megan Buckley of Homeland Security Investigations. The District Attorney’s Office would like to thank Loyola University Chicago and the Metropolitan Museum of Art for their assistance and cooperation with our investigations.

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[1] Any charges referenced herein that have not already resulted in convictions are merely allegations, and any individuals not convicted are presumed innocent unless and until proven guilty.  All factual recitations are derived from documents filed in court and statements made on the record in court.