New York: The United States has returned more than 1,400 looted artefacts worth $10 million to India. The pieces were returned at a ceremony with Manish Kulhary from the Consulate General of India in New York and Alexandra deArmas, Group Supervisor from the Homeland Security Investigation, New York Cultural Property, Art, and Antiquities Group.
‘Today’s repatriation marks another victory in what has been a multiyear international investigation into antiquities trafficked by one of history’s most prolific offenders,’ William Walker, the federal Homeland Security Investigation’s New York special agent in charge, said in a press statement.
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Among the pieces returned were: A sandstone sculpture depicting a Celestial Dancer, which was looted from a temple in Madhya Pradesh, India, in the early 1980’s.The Tanesar Mother Goddess, carved from green-gray schist and looted from the village of Tanesara-Mahadeva in Rajasthan, India. First documented in the late 1950s by an Indian archaeologist along with 11 other sculptures of mother goddesses, the Tanesar Mother Goddess and her fellow mother goddesses were stolen in 1960s.
In July, the US and India signed an agreement to protect cultural property by preventing illegal trades and streamlining the process of returning stolen antiquities back to India. The US returned 297 stolen antiquities to India in September. The antiquities belong to a time period spanning almost 4000 years, from 2000 BCE – 1900 CE and have origins in different parts of India. The majority of the antiquities were terracotta artefacts from Eastern India, while others were made in stone, metal, wood and ivory and belong to different parts of the country.
Since 2016, the US Government has facilitated the return of a large number of trafficked or stolen antiquities. 10 antiquities were returned during PM’s visit to USA in June 2016; 157 antiquities during his visit in September 2021 and a further 105 antiquities during his visit in June last year. The total number of cultural artefacts returned from US to India since 2016 stands at 578. This is the maximum number of cultural artefacts returned by any country to India.
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