Manhattan D.A.’s Office Returns More Than 650 Looted Artifacts to India
On April 28, Manhattan District Attorney Alvin L. Bragg, Jr., announced the repatriation of 657 trafficked antiquities to India, valued at nearly $14 million, following investigations by the D.A.’s Antiquities Trafficking Unit and Homeland Security Investigations. Among the returns was a $2 million bronze Avalokiteshvara from a 7th–8th century Sirpur-site group, stolen from the Mahant Ghasidas Memorial Museum by 1982 and seized from a New York private collection in 2025. Also included was a $7.5 million red sandstone standing Buddha smuggled by Subhash Kapoor, a former Manhattan dealer convicted in India in 2022 and awaiting extradition to the US, recovered from a New York storage unit. The repatriation further included a dancing Ganesha sculpture linked to trafficker Vaman Ghiya and dealer Doris Wiener, later sold with false provenance via Christie’s in 2012 and surrendered this year; the unit has recovered more than 6,200 items valued over $485 million and returned more than 5,900 objects to 36 countries.
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This story was covered in Biennale Uprisings, Looted Legacies Unravel