Antiquities Stolen By UES Art Dealer Are Returned To India

UPPER EAST SIDE, NY — Authorities have returned hundreds of Indian antiquities to their home country, years after they were allegedly stolen as part of a smuggling ring that centered on an Upper East Side art gallery, prosecutors said Thursday.

The 248 items, valued at about $15 million, were repatriated on Thursday in a ceremony attended by the Indian Consul General following an investigation by the Manhattan District Attorney's office.

Of those items, 235 were seized during the investigation into Subhash Kapoor, the former owner of Art of the Past: a now-closed gallery on Madison Avenue near East 89th Street. Kapoor has been accused of looting more than 2,600 Buddhist, Hindu and South Asian artworks, conspiring with restorers to conceal the works' origins.

The 235 works belonging to Kapoor were all sold out of his gallery, a D.A.'s office spokesperson said.

American authorities first issued an arrest warrant for Kapoor in 2012 and he was indicted in 2019, while already imprisoned in India on similar charges. Last summer, New York prosecutors filed papers to extradite him to the U.S.

The items returned on Thursday included a 12th-century bronze Shiva Nataraja statuette, valued at $4 million, which was stolen from a temple in the 1960s and sold by the dealer Doris Wiener, whose daughter, Nancy, pleaded guilty to participating in the trafficking scheme earlier this month.

The statue's buyer was the Upper East Side's Asia Society, an "unwitting recipient" that cooperated with the investigation, the D.A.'s office said.

Also returned Thursday were a pair of bronze Nandikesvara and Kankalamurti statues, stolen from an Indian temple in 1985, which resurfaced during separate auctions during this year's Asia Week.

"We profusely thank the Manhattan D.A.’s Office for their support and cooperation in the return of antiquities to India,” India’s Consul General, Randhir Jaiswal, said in a statement.

Subhash Kapoor's arrest caused a stir in the art world a decade ago. Before the scandal broke, Kapoor had been feted at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, which later had to evaluate some of the antiquities it received from him to see whether they had been smuggled illegally.

The investigation is being handled by the Manhattan DA's Antiquities Trafficking Unit, which has recovered more than 500 treasures to 12 countries since August 2020, the office said.

"This extraordinary assemblage of artifacts, recovered from five different criminal investigations over the past decade, embodies the timeless cultural and cosmic bridge between ancient and modern-day India," District Attorney Cyrus R. Vance said in a statement.

"Today’s event also serves as a potent reminder that individuals who maraud sacred temples in pursuit of individual profit are committing crimes not only against a country’s heritage but also its present and future."

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