Why thieves and Western dealers find Indian antiques attractive

The bronze statue of Parvati seized from Subhash Kapoor

February 25, 2022

The criminal trial of Subhash Kapoor, a former New York art dealer, is currently underway in Tamil Nadu.

In 2012, special agents with the U.S. Homeland Security Investigations at the Port of Newark, New Jersey, seized a 14th century A.D. bronze statue of Parvati, the Hindu goddess of love and devotion. The Parvati, and four other antique bronze figures that were also seized, were stolen from India and were then estimated to be together worth more than $5 million.

The Parvati statue was one of many items stolen from temples in the state of Tamil Nadu and allegedly sold by Kapoor. Last October, the U.S. returned 248 antiques to India, worth about $15 million: 235 of those were seized from Kapoor and the rest surrendered by others related to the investigation. Among the items returned was a 12th Century bronze statue of the Hindu god Shiva, valued at $4 million.

Kapoor, 72-years-old, ran the Art of the Past gallery on Madison Avenue, New York, alongside some of the major American art galleries.  In 2011, Kapoor, who was on the Interpol wanted list, was arrested at the Frankfurt International Airport in Germany. He was extradited to India, where he is in the Trichi jail, 200 miles south of Chennai.   

U.S. prosecutors have attained convictions of three others who worked with Kapoor: his sister, Sushma Sareen; a former girlfriend, Selina Mohamed; and Aaron Freeman, his gallery manager. Two art restorers, Neil Perry Smith, who was extradited from London, and Richard Salmon of Brooklyn, New York are also facing charges.

The most common story Kapoor reportedly used, to disguise the stolen antiques as legitimate pieces, was that they had come from the family collection of Mohammed. Another favourite story was that it came from a private collector named Raj Mehgoug, who at the time, lived in a modest duplex apartment outside Philadelphia.

The jailing of Kapoor and convictions of his associates has evidently not deterred others dealing in stolen Indian antiquities. Each year, according to a story in the UNESCO Courier, a publication of the UN cultural organization, more than 1,000 Indian antiques – defined as artifacts more than a hundred years old - are smuggled out of India. The actual figures are likely far higher.

Since India’s independence in 1947, the stolen antiques range from Hindu gods and goddesses and figures of Buddha to pillars from temples, scrolls from holy shrines, Moghul miniature paintings, teak-wood door frames from Rajasthan and Christian figures from Goa. In many cases, the stolen religious figures were venerated for centuries by the local population.

Between 1965 and 1970, over a hundred erotic stone sculptures were stolen from the renowned Khajuraho temples, which were built between 950 and 1050, in the state of Madhya Pradesh. In 1968, 125 pieces of antique jewelry and thirty-two rare gold coins were reported lost from the National Museum in New Delhi.

Prior to 1947, the British, French and Portuguese colonialists looted massive quantities of Indian antiquities. So far, the Indian government has not pursued legal ways to retrieve them. Also, unlike Chinese billionaires, Indian billionaires have not bought antiques and returned them to India.

Art smuggling is a highly lucrative, multi-billion-dollar global business, involving thieves, smugglers, dealers, restorers, appraisers, art advisers, curators, lawyers and money launderers. In India, the thieves and smugglers include government employees, taxi drivers, hotel owners, middle class professionals as well as dacoits and other criminals.

On the other side, the buyers of stolen, renowned antiques - in the case of Kapoor - included the Metropolitan Museum in New York, the National Gallery of Australia, Canberra, the Los Angeles County Museum and other major museums in the West. In fact, in 2009, the Metropolitan museum held a reception to honor Kapoor for donating dozens of Indian drawings. Overall, most of the stolen antiques from India and elsewhere are bought by private collectors and largely hidden from legal scrutiny.    

And connecting the smugglers and the buyers are dealers like Kapoor. He started in the trade as a boy in his father’s Delhi antiques shop. He moved to New York in his twenties and founded his gallery in 1987. In 2003, he created Nimbus Import Export, a U.S. company “for trading in cultural antiques”.

Since 2007, the Indian consulate in New York has worked with U.S. special agents to track and secure the return of antiques. The consulate first tipped the agents that a New York import and export company, allegedly run by Kapoor, was to receive a shipment of seven crates of stolen antiquities labelled as "Marble Garden Table Sets."

Over the next five years, U.S. special agents seized dozens of stolen Indian antiquities with an estimated value of nearly $100 million. They included a 2nd century B.C. Bharhut Stupa Yaksi pillar sculpture valued at nearly $18 million; a five-foot tall head of Buddha, weighing approximately 1,600 pounds; and one life-sized stone figure weighing approximately 500 pounds.

Kapoor, who became an American citizen in 1980, faces extradition to the U.S. to be tried on trafficking and other charges related to dealing in some 2,600 allegedly stolen South Asian antiques, valued at more than $100 million, which were traced by U.S. agents. He has pleaded not guilty. As the Art Newspaper notes, the massive haul by U.S. agents “represents only the inventory Kapoor had on hand when arrested. Since the 1980s Kapoor has sold or donated thousands more objects.”

It is highly unlikely that local elected officials, the police and administrators in India are unaware of the theft of antiques. And given that Indians are curious about outsiders, thieves entering a village and stealing antiques must attract attention. While villagers and most officials may be silent, fearing physical harm by the criminals, some officials perhaps ignore the theft in return for bribes from the thieves.

One brave Indian is S. Vijay Kumar, based in Chennai, who provided a key piece of evidence that led to Kapoor’s arrest. Visiting ancient temples in Tamil Nadu, as an art enthusiast, he found lots of antique idols and objects missing. So in 2008, Kumar, 48, who runs a small shipping business, founded India Pride Project. It has about 40 volunteers around the globe, who visit museums and galleries, scan catalogs and join Facebook groups seeking to find stolen Indian antiques and then alert police investigators.

Last September, as a result of the project’s work, the U.S. government returned 157 stolen antiques to India including a Nataraja figure from the 12th CE; a 1.5-metre bas relief panel of Revanta (a Hindu deity) in sandstone from 10th CE, and a terracotta vase from the 2nd CE. 

Kumar has nearly 10,000 followers on Twitter, where his handle is @poetryinstone. He has a blog and a Twitter hashtag #bringourgodshome, though he is not a religious person.  

Kumar is aware that his group is having only a minor impact, given the magnitude of antique smuggling that caters to the high demand from Western museums and collectors. Yet, as he told The Washington, that “finding one out of 100 can still be a deterrent.”

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