The United States has announced that it will return 20 archaeological treasures worth 41 million rupees to Nepal.
The New York-based Manhattan District Attorney's Office (District Attorney's Office) issued a press release and said that it will return 20 antiquities with a value of 3.3 million US dollars or 41.1 million Nepalese rupees, which were smuggled from Nepal to the United States at different times. The return date is not mentioned in the statement.
20 antiquities, including portraits of 15th-century military governor Gagan Singh Bharo and his wives, a Buddha statue stolen from a stupa in Bungmati, and a stone goddess statue, were mentioned in the release. Among those assets, it has been confirmed by research that the portrait of Gagan Singh Bharo and his wives is a traditional religious painting made by the Newars of Nepal. According to the inscription, the painting is estimated to be between 1450 and 1474. This painting was discovered in the year 1980 in the investigation of theft from Itumbaha: a monastery in Kathmandu . In 1982, it was found with an antiquities dealer in New York County.
The Buddha statue stolen from the Bungmati Stupa in Kathmandu is believed to be from the ninth century. It depicts Shakyamuni Buddha. The statue was stolen from the Bungmati Stupa in Nepal in the late 1970s and then recovered from a London businessman in the 1980s. The statue of the stone goddess was first seen in a room of the Vishnu Devi Temple complex in Kathmandu in 1975, and then came to New York County from Switzerland in 1984. The statue was purchased by New York-based collector Robert Hatfield Ellsworth and sold by the District Attorney's antiquities unit in 2025.
Indian-origin Subhas Kapoor and his antiquities recovered from the smuggling network were confirmed to have been smuggled out of Nepal, according to District Attorney (District Attorney) Alvin L. Bragg Jr. The attorney's office has also claimed to have been investigating Kapoor and his network for the illegal looting, export and sale of artifacts from several countries in South and Southeast Asia since a decade ago. The attorney's office has issued an arrest warrant for Kapoor in 2012 and his case is pending in India.
"The people of Nepal have fought for the return of these precious antiquities for decades and I am pleased that our long-term investigation has resulted in the return of these items," Bragg said in a statement. was . The total value of which is estimated to be more than 250 million dollars .
