Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Friday announced that the United States government has decided to return more than 100 Indian antiquities that had been “stolen from us” and said he was grateful to the American government for the gesture. The Prime Minister on Friday concluded his three-day state visit to the United States.
“I am happy that the American government has decided to return more than 100 Indian antiquities that had been stolen from us. These antiquities may have gotten to the international market in different ways – some legal, some illegal. I express my gratitude to the American government for returning these items,” the Prime Minister said while interacting with members of the Indian-American community at the Ronald Reagan Centre in Washington DC.
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On March 14, The Indian Express reported following an investigation in collaboration with the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) and UK-based Finance Uncovered, that the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York had at least 77 antiquities in its catalogue linked to jailed smuggler Subhash Kapoor. The Met said last month that 16 of these antiquities had been returned to India.
On March 15, the publication reported further that the Met’s formidable Asia collection included at least 94 artefacts of Jammu and Kashmir origin — 81 sculptures, five paintings, five pages of a manuscript, two Kashmir carpet antiquities and one page of calligraphy — none of which had details in their provenance, or background documents, of when they were moved out and by whom.
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On June 15, the Archaeological Survey of India said in reply to an RTI query that “a mail has been received from the Ministry of External Affairs through the Ministry of Culture in the month of May 2023. All efforts are being taken to retrieve the art objects and the matter is in progress.”
On March 22, the New York Supreme Court issued a search warrant against the Metropolitan Museum of Art and gave the New York Police Department 10 days to seize the antiquities and produce them before it.
On March 30, the museum issued a statement that it would “transfer 15 sculptures for return to the government of India, after having learned that the works were illegally removed from India”. It said that “all of the works were sold at one point by Subhash Kapoor, a dealer currently serving a prison sentence in India.”
Subhash Kapoor, described by the US Department of Homeland Security as “one of the most prolific commodities smugglers in the world”, was arrested in Frankfurt on October 30, 2011, and extradited to India in July 2012. On November 1, 2022, he was sentenced to 10 years in jail by a court in Tamil Nadu’s Kumbakonam on charges of burglary and illegal export of idols belonging to the Varadharaja Perumal temple in Kanchipuram. He is currently serving his sentence in Trichy jail.