United States returns 192 stolen artefact worth $34.4 Million to Pakistan

The Manhattan District Attorney's office in New York announced on Friday, the United States has returned 192 stolen artefacts worth around $3.4 million after an investigation into a notorious Indian-American art dealer, Subhash Kapoor.

As per the announcement, 187 of the artefacts were recovered from Kapoor, identifying him as one of the world’s most prolific antiquities traffickers.

The art pieces and artefacts included a Gandharan statute depicting a Maitreya, or an enlightened form of the Buddha, which was looted from Pakistan and smuggled into New York during the 1990s.

Kapoor had owned an art gallery in New York called Art of the Past and a side business that specialized in selling antiquities from Southeast Asia when he was accused of smuggling and selling stolen artifacts.

The antiquities were looted from a Neolithic archaeological site in Pakistan before being trafficked to New York. They were placed in a storage unit rented by agents of the Art of the Past until their seizure by U.S. authorities this year.