NEW YORK, NEW YORK—According to a statement released by the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office, more than 1,400 artifacts were repatriated to India in a ceremony at the Consulate General of India in New York as the result of several ongoing investigations into antiquities trafficking. “We will continue to investigate the many trafficking networks that have targeted Indian cultural heritage,” said Alvin L. Bragg, Jr., Manhattan District Attorney. The repatriated objects include a sandstone sculpture of a Celestial Dancer looted from a temple in Madhya Pradesh in the early 1980s, and a green-gray schist carving known as the Tanesar Mother Goddess, which was looted from Rajasthan’s village of Tenesara-Mahadeva in the early 1960s. “[Homeland Security Investigation, New York Cultural Property, Art, and Antiquities Group] and our colleagues at the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office have worked tirelessly with our partners in India and beyond to disrupt and dismantle the smuggling networks and in turn recover these invaluable pieces,” commented HSI New York Special Agent in Charge William S. Walker. To read about sculptures uncovered at the site of a Buddhist monastery in India's Odisha state, go to "Early Buddhism in India."
