US returns 8 ancient idols in big retrieval

CHENNAI: In the largest retrieval of stolen ancient artefacts this year, the United States has returned eight idols — some dating back to more than 1,000 years and one from Tamil Nadu — to the county.
The consignment includes sculptures from Tamil Nadu, Rajasthan and Madhya Pradesh, some of which US officials collected from private art collectors in that country.The Archaeological Survey of India (ASI) took possession of the artefacts in New Delhi on Monday.
“One of the artefacts from the Pallava period is an idol of Mahishasura Mardini standing over a bull,” ASI director (antiquity, publication and CEP) D N Dimri told TOI from New Delhi. Historians have found many of the known Pallava-period relicts in Mamallapuram, south of Chennai, an erstwhile port town of the dynasty.
“We traced to Rajasthan and areas bordering Madhya Pradesh some of the other idols including an ornamented stone image carved under a decorated niche, a standing Shiva and the bust of a female figure,” Dimri said.
Police have registered an FIR pertaining to two missing 9th or 10th century sculptures from Rajasthan’s Kota district.
“Individuals possessed some of these antiques,” Dimri said. “After it emerged that smugglers had stolen the artefacts from India, private art collectors handed them over to the consulate general of India in New York.”
An ASI team that travelled to the US in early 2016 verified some of the artefacts. The authorities brought the idols from the US to India on February 24, sources said.
Officials refused to divulge the names of the private collectors who volunteered to return the smuggled idols. Various enforcement agencies are on the trail of art dealers who traded in smuggled antiquities from India in connivance with local contacts who took them from historic sites and old temples from across the country.
One of the most notorious of these traders, Subhash Kapoor, is now on trial in Chennai. Investigators believe Kapoor, a New York-based art dealer and previously owner of Art of the Past gallery in Manhattan, was the key player in massive international smuggling racket.
Australia, Canada, Germany and the US have over the past few years returned stolen idols to India.