More artifacts tied to traffickers repatriated to India

At least 657 antiquities collectively valued at nearly $14 million, including sandstone sculptures of Buddha and Ganesha tied to convicted traffickers Subhash Kapoor and Nancy Wiener, have been repatriated by the United States to India.

The return of the artifacts was announced on April 28 by the office of Manhattan District Attorney Alvin L. Bragg, which said the pieces were recovered in connection with multiple ongoing investigations into criminal trafficking networks. They were handed over to Consul Rajlakshmi Kadam from the Consulate General of India in New York in a recent ceremony.

The most valuable item repatriated is a $7.5 million red sandstone figure of a Buddha, standing with his right hand raised in abhaya–mudra, a gesture of protection. It was smuggled into the United States by Kapoor and seized by the Antiquities Trafficking Unit of the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office from a storage unit rented he had rented.

“The Buddha’s feet are broken off below the knees and only fragments of the halo behind his head are visible,” Bragg’s office said in the news release, calling it damage that likely occurred when the statue was looted from northern India.

Another sandstone figure of a dancing Ganesha was looted from a temple in Madhya Pradesh, India, in 2000 by Ranjeet Kanwar—described as an indicted co-conspirator of Kapoor. The sculpture was then sold and shipped by convicted trafficker Vaman Ghiya to New York-based gallery owner Doris Wiener, Nancy’s mother.

Wiener is accused of having faked the provenance for the sculpture in 2012, after the death of her mother. It was then consigned to Christie’s New York and sold at auction to a private collector who surrendered it to prosecutors earlier this year.

Another of the artifacts returned was a $2 million bronze figure of Avalokiteshvara, seated on an inscribed double-lotus base over a lion-flanked throne, according to prosecutors.

That sculpture was discovered in 1939 and was included in the collection of the Mahant Ghasidas Memorial Museum, Raipur, by 1952. It entered the illicit art market decades later, after it was stolen and smuggled into the United States.

It ended up in a private collection in New York by 2014, from where it was seized last year.

Prosecutors previously obtained an arrest warrant for Kapoor in 2012. He and seven others were indicted for their conspiracy to traffic stolen antiquities. He was separately convicted for trafficking-related charges in India in 2022, though his extradition from India remains pending.

Federal authorities first targeted Wiener in December 2016, when agents raided her gallery during Asia Week and seized antiquities investigators alleged had been looted from South and Southeast Asia.

Prosecutors later accused her of participating in a decades-long trafficking operation that smuggled artifacts into the United States and concealed their origins through falsified provenance records before they were sold to collectors, galleries and auction houses.

In 2021, Wiener pleaded guilty to conspiracy and possession of stolen property charges connected to the antiquities investigation. Authorities have continued announcing repatriations tied to the case in the years since.

Bragg said in 2024 that 30 antiquities were returned to Cambodia and Indonesia, including a Khmer bronze “Shiva Triad” that investigators said had previously passed through Wiener before entering a U.S. collection.

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