In a news release on Thursday, district attorney Alvin L. Bragg Jr. announced the repatriation.
The return is the result of a lengthy inquiry into the selling of artefacts that had been taken from several nations throughout the world. Subhash Kapoor, an Indian American antiquities dealer, is accused of running a multi-million dollar trafficking network out of his Manhattan gallery, Art of the Past, and 187 of the artefacts are allegedly connected to him.
According to the press release, the district attorney’s office returned the artefacts during a repatriation ceremony on Thursday at the Pakistan Consulate in New York.
Kapoor was given a 10 year prison sentence for smuggling violations earlier this month by an Indian court. Investigators claim he assisted in the trafficking of thousands of valuables taken from temples, ruins, and archaeological sites across Asia, and he has now been charged in the US along with seven other defendants.
As part of its investigations into Kapoor, the Manhattan district attorney’s Antiquities Trafficking Unit has seized over 2,500 items, believed to be worth $143 million. The disgraced dealer’s attorney stated earlier this month in an interview with CNN that he intended to fight any efforts to extradite his client to the US.
Consul General Ayesha Ali claims that the ceremony on Thursday comes after 45 stolen antiques that were connected to another convicted smuggler were earlier returned to Pakistan.
We started this journey with the District Attorney’s Office and (the Department of Homeland Security) in November 2020, when 45 stolen Gandhara artefacts were returned. Today, Ali said in the release, “we are very fortunate that another batch of 192 antiquities valued at $3.4 million are being returned.”
Some of the oldest known human-made miniatures in the world, known as “Mehrgarh dolls,” were among the items that were returned on Thursday. According to the press release, the ancient statues were stolen from a Neolithic archaeological site in Pakistan.
