Yesterday, Thursday, the New York Judiciary returned 192 stolen and illegally transferred works of art worth $3.4 million to Pakistan as part of an international investigation into a 10-year-old smuggler of Indian and American art imprisoned in India.
For two years, the New York State Judiciary has been conducting a broad campaign to return antiquities looted around the world and exhibited in museums and art galleries of the metropolis: from 2020 to 2021, at least 700 items were returned to 14 countries, including Egypt, Iraq, India, Pakistan, Cambodia, Greece and Italy.
And Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg announced Thursday in a statement that 192 works of art were returned to “the Pakistani people” during a ceremony held at the Pakistani Consulate General in New York.
Of these, 187 were part of a smuggling operation led by former Indian-American art dealer Subhash Kapoor.
For a decade, Kapoor has been the focus of a wide-ranging investigation of the American judiciary known as “Hidden Inaction”.
Kapoor was arrested in 2011 in Germany and extradited to India, where he is still imprisoned. Last week he was tried and sentenced in the South Asian country along with another defendant who was sentenced to 13 years in prison.
Last March, Australia returned to India 29 works of art that had been looted and illegally exported, including 13 Kapoor-related works, according to Canberra.
