New Delhi: After sustained coordination and investigations, India has secured the return of hundreds of stolen antiquities, with authorities focusing on dismantling global smuggling networks and reclaiming cultural heritage. The Manhattan District Attorney’s Office has returned 657 stolen antiquities, collectively valued at nearly $14 million, to India.
They were recovered pursuant to several ongoing probes into criminal trafficking involving alleged antiquities trafficker Subhash Kapoor and convicted smuggler Nancy Wiener. District Attorney Alvin L. Bragg Jr., in a statement, said, “The return highlights the massive scale of trafficking networks that targeted India’s heritage. Efforts to recover and repatriate stolen and smuggled artefacts will continue. There is, unfortunately, more work to be done to return stolen artefacts back to India, and I thank our team for their persistent efforts.”
The Manhattan District Attorney’s Office has returned 657 stolen antiquities valued at nearly $14 million to India, marking one of the largest single restitutions of cultural property. Announced by District Attorney Alvin L. Bragg Jr., the handover underscores the scale of global… pic.twitter.com/ld8A5RN5ZD
— Lawstreet Journal (@LawstreetJ) April 30, 2026
The artefacts were returned at a ceremony attended by the Consul-General of India, Rajlakshmi Kadam, in New York. Bragg Jr. said, “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”. It is reported that these 657 were delivered in three phases: 612 were returned in November 2024, 26 in July 2025, and in the third phase, 19 were returned to India on 28th April 2026. Of the 19, 17 are linked to Subhash Kapoor.
Notable among the returned artefacts is a red sandstone figure of Buddha standing with his right hand raised in Abhaya mudra, a gesture of protection. His feet are broken below the knees, and only fragments of the halo behind his head remain—damage that likely occurred when the murthi was stolen from North India. The statue is worth $7.5 million and was smuggled to New York by Kapoor and later seized by the Antiquities Trafficking Unit from one of his godowns.
Another returned artefact is a bronze figure of Avalokiteshvara seated on an inscribed double lotus base over a lion-flanked throne. The inscription names the sculptor as Dronaditya of Sirpur, located near modern-day Raipur in Chhattisgarh. The murthi was part of a large hoard of bronzes discovered near the Lakshmana Temple in 1939 and had entered the collection of the Mahant Ghasidas Memorial Museum, Raipur, by 1952. It was later stolen from the museum and smuggled into the US by 1982. It ended up in a private collector’s hands in New York in 2014. The idol, worth $2 million, was located and seized from the collection in 2025.
Another artefact is a dancing Ganesha, looted in 2000 from a temple in Madhya Pradesh by Kapoor associate Ranjeet Shantoo Kanwar. Nancy Wiener, who created false provenance for the murthi, sold it through Christie’s New York. It was purchased by a private collector at the 2012 auction, who earlier this year returned it to the District Attorney.
India Pride Project co-founder S. Vijaya Kumar said, “It is indeed a proud moment for us as we see the results of our work over more than a decade and a half bear fruit. India must thank the Department of Homeland Security (HSI) for their sustained efforts in tracking these looted artefacts and ensuring their restitution to India. This is the result of 15 years of deciphering and dismantling the Indian art smuggling market, which stole our murthis and supplied them to the West via dealers such as Subhash Kapoor and Wiener.”
The statement said, “For more than a decade, the Manhattan District Attorney’s Antiquities Trafficking Unit and HSI investigations have pursued Kapoor and his associates for allegedly looting and trafficking artefacts from South and South-East Asia. An arrest warrant for Kapoor was issued in 2012, and in 2019 he and seven co-defendants were indicted in New York. Kapoor, convicted in India in 2022 for trafficking offences, is currently awaiting extradition to the United States.”
Vijayakumar said, “The Antiquities Trafficking Unit has so far recovered more than 6,200 cultural objects valued at over $485 million and returned over 5,900 items to 36 countries. It has also secured convictions against 18 individuals in cultural property crimes, while extradition proceedings against seven are pending. There are more than 1,000 more artefacts to be returned”.
