US Returns Stolen Nepali Artifacts Dating to 16th Century
Published Date
Published Date
The U.S. returns ancient Nepali artifacts, including Bhairav masks and sculptures, confiscated during investigations into illicit trafficking.
⏱ 2 min read
On Monday, 4th November 2023, the United States returned four stolen Nepali artifacts to their rightful home in Nepal. Bishnu Gautam, the acting consul general of the Consulate General of Nepal in New York, accepted the sculptures from Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg Jr. and other high-ranking officials from the District Attorney's Office.
These ancient artifacts, which date back to the 16th and 17th centuries, consist of two gilded Bhairav masks (Mukhundo), a Shiva and Parvati sculpture (Uma-Maheshwara), and a Durga sculpture. The Manhattan District Attorney's Office stated that three of these pieces were retrieved as part of ongoing investigations into criminal networks that specifically target Nepali antiquities.
One of the artifacts was confiscated during an investigation into Subhash Kapoor, an alleged notorious plunderer who has been implicated in the trafficking of items from numerous countries, including Afghanistan, Cambodia, India, Indonesia, Myanmar, Nepal, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, and Thailand. For more than ten years, the District Attorney's Antiquities Trafficking Unit and their law enforcement partners at Homeland Security Investigations have been probing Kapoor and his alleged accomplices for their purported involvement in the unlawful looting, exporting, and selling of artifacts originating from various nations in South and Southeast Asia – Nepal among them.
Kapoor and his co-defendants are accused of smuggling looted artifacts into Manhattan and subsequently selling them via Kapoor’s Madison Avenue-based gallery called Art of the Past. Between 2011 and 2023, HSI collaborated with the attorney office to recover over 2,500 items purportedly trafficked by Kapoor and his associates—a sum that exceeds $143 million in value.
At the formal handover ceremony, Acting Consul General Gautam conveyed profound gratitude on behalf of Nepal's government and citizens towards District Attorney Bragg and his team, as well as members from both the United States Department of Homeland Security Investigations-New York team and other officials, for their cooperation in recovering and repatriating these invaluable sculptures. Additionally, he expressed heartfelt thanks to the museums, investigators, media representatives, art and heritage campaigners, researchers, and all others who played a role in this process.