The office of Manhattan District Attorney (DA) Alvin Bragg announced late last month that it had returned 657 antiquities, collectively valued at nearly $14m, to Indian authorities. The pieces were recovered through several ongoing investigations into criminal trafficking networks and handed over at a ceremony at India’s consulate in New York City. Some of the objects recovered were linked to the smuggling networks of the convicted traffickers Subhash Kapoor and Nancy Wiener.
Among the returned pieces is a bronze figure of Avalokiteshvara, valued at $2m. The figure was part of a large group of bronzes discovered near the Lakshamana Temple in 1939 and had entered the Mahant Ghasidas Memorial Museum's collection in Raipur by 1952. However, it was subsequently stolen and, by 1982, had been smuggled into the United States. It was located and seized from a private New York collection in 2025.
Also being repatriated to India is a red sandstone Buddha, its feet broken off below the knees, which is valued at $7.5m. It had been smuggled to New York by Kapoor and was retrieved from one of his storage units by the Manhattan DA’s Antiquities Trafficking Unit.
Additionally, a sandstone dancing Ganesha, looted from a temple in Madhya Pradesh in 2000 by one of Kapoor’s indicted co-conspirators, was relocated after passing through several hands. It had been sold to Nancy Wiener’s mother, the dealer Doris Wiener; after her mother’s death, Nancy Wiener created a false provenance for the artifact and successfully consigned it to Christie’s. It went up for auction in New York in 2012, where it was purchased by a private collector who later surrendered it to the District Attorney’s office.
"The scale of the trafficking networks that targeted cultural heritage in India is massive, as demonstrated by the return of more than 600 pieces today," Bragg said in a statement.
Kapoor and seven co-defendants were indicted in November 2019 for conspiring to traffic stolen antiquities from South and Southeast Asia. He was convicted in India in 2022, and his extradition to the US remains pending. Five co-defendants have already been convicted.
