New Delhi: As part of an initiative to repatriate stolen cultural treasures from countries in south and south-east Asia, the United States returned more than 1,400 looted artefacts valued at $10 million to India.
The recovered works of art had been on display at the famous Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.
Among the returned objects is a sandstone sculpture of a celestial dancer, reported CNN. The beautiful sculpture had been illegally smuggled from central India to London before being sold and later donated to the New York museum.
The artefacts were officially handed over at a ceremony held at the Indian consulate in New York on Wednesday.
In July, India and the US signed a historic ‘Cultural Property Agreement’, aimed at curbing illicit trade of antiquities between the two countries.
Since then, this is the second lot of repatriation of stolen artefacts, following the return of 297 articles to India in September.
The Manhattan District Attorney’s Office confirmed that the artefacts returned three days ago were recovered as part of its investigation into criminal trafficking networks, including those linked to notorious art traffickers Subhash Kapoor and Nancy Wiener.
Kapoor is a convicted antiquities dealer who operated a multimillion-dollar looting racket under the guise of his gallery in New York.
