Many precious statues are everywhere, but thieves stole and sold them. Their value is estimated to be crores of rupees. Some stolen statues reached America and were kept in the New York Museum. America has started an initiative to return stolen artefacts from the countries of South and South-East Asia. Under this, over 1400 stolen artefacts worth 10 million dollars (84 crores) have been returned to India, which were stolen from different parts of the country.
According to media reports, artefacts looted and stolen from India were returned to the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office in New York, America, on Wednesday. Many items recently displayed in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York are among the recovered artefacts. They also included a stone statue of a divine dancer, which had been smuggled from Central India to London and sold there.
Statues From Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan Are Also Included
The antiques returned to India by the US include the sandstone Dev Nritya statue looted from a temple in Madhya Pradesh in the 1980s. It was stolen and taken to London. To smuggle this statue, the thieves divided it into two parts. Later, both parts were joined and donated to the museum. The green-brown Tanesar Devi statue looted from the Tanesara-Mahadev village of Rajasthan in the 1960s is also included. It will be brought back to India soon.
The Process Of Bringing Back The Statue Started In July
India and the US started the process of stopping illegal trade and returning stolen antiquities to India in July. In September, the US returned 297 stolen antiquities, about 4000 years old.
Manhattan District Attorney Alvin L Bragg said, “We will continue to investigate various smuggling networks targeting Indian cultural heritage.” The statement said that during Bragg’s tenure, the District Attorney’s Anti-Antiquities Smuggling Unit recovered more than 2,100 stolen antiquities from more than 30 countries, worth approximately US$230 million.
