{"id":13727,"date":"2012-07-29T04:07:54","date_gmt":"2012-07-29T04:07:54","guid":{"rendered":""},"modified":"2012-07-29T04:07:44","modified_gmt":"2012-07-29T04:07:44","slug":"NY-art-dealer-stashed-millions-in-stolen-India-treasure","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/?p=13727","title":{"rendered":"NY art dealer stashed millions in \u2018stolen\u2019 India treasure"},"content":{"rendered":"

A crooked Manhattan art dealer had a $30 million treasure trove of stolen antiquities that would make Indiana Jones jealous \u2014 including ancient carvings and statues swiped from temples in India and other countries, authorities charged yesterday.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Subhash Chandra Kapoor stuffed four Upper West Side storage spaces with Buddha heads, a statue of the Hindu deity Lord Shiva worth $3.5 million, a massive 3,000-pound stone carving of a potbellied god, and bronze religious sculptures.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey\u2019re worth tens of millions of dollars together,\u201d a law-enforcement source said of the several dozen statues and other antiquities seized from Sofia Storage on West 83rd Street. \u201cThey\u2019re stunning \u2014 absolutely stunning.<\/p>\n

\u201cSome of them still have dirt on them. Many of them were taken off the sides of temples.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Manhattan DA\u2019s Office issued an arrest warrant charging Kapoor, 63, with receiving items stolen from religious sites in his native India and elsewhere.<\/p>\n

Kapoor<\/strong>, who has dealt art out of the Upper East Side since the mid-1970s, is already in custody in India on separate charges of trafficking in precious idols stolen from temples in the state of Tamil Nadu.<\/p>\n

Cops there claim Kapoor is the \u201ckingpin\u201d of an \u201cinternational racket\u201d of antiquities smugglers who in 2005 enlisted Chennai-based art dealer Sanjivi Asokan to steal valuable metal idols from India\u2019s Chola Era.<\/p>\n

Three Chola Era bronze sculptures suspected of being stolen from Tamil Nadu temples were recovered in yesterday\u2019s Upper West Side raid.<\/p>\n

Tamil Nadu cops also claim Kapoor smuggled Buddhist artifacts out of Afghanistan and other valuable antiquities out of Pakistan.<\/strong> A source told The Post that many of the items \u2014 after being stolen \u2014 were shipped to Hong Kong, and then to Kapoor in New York.<\/p>\n

He allegedly used his Madison Avenue gallery, Art of the Past, and a corporation called Nimbus Import Export as part of the smuggling operation.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Kapoor also allegedly created false paperwork to hide the origins of his ill-gotten antiquities, and investigators are urging museums and collectors to check their inventories.<\/p>\n

Kapoor was arrested on an Interpol warrant while traveling through Germany last fall, and extradited to India on July 14.<\/p>\n

He was given up by his ex-lover, a Singapore art dealer named Paramaspry Punusamy.<\/p>\n

The two split up amid a dispute involving Indian idols \u2014 accusing each other in a Singapore court of withholding antiquities from each other.<\/p>\n

Agents from the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) division of Homeland Security raided two other Kapoor\u2019s Sofia Storage units in January, while he was in custody in Germany.<\/p>\n

That search turned up dozens of antiquities with an estimated value of nearly $10 million \u2014 including a 5-foot-tall head of Buddha weighing about 1,600 pounds, ICE\u2019s spokesman said.<\/p>\n

Yesterday\u2019s raid of his other four storage units recovered items worth more than $20 million, the ICE spokesman said.<\/p>\n

Authorities would not explain the seven-month lag between the raids \u2014 but the latest search comes amid Kapoor\u2019s cooperation with Indian police.<\/p>\n

ICE officials said they will aggressively pursue any pieces not yet recovered.<\/p>\n

Read more<\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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