Subhash Kapoor is an

Indian American Indian Americans or Indo-Americans are citizens of the United States with ancestry from India. The United States Census Bureau uses the term Asian Indian to avoid confusion with Native Americans, who have also historically been referred to ...

art smuggler who was convicted for running a $100 million international smuggling racket. He was previously the owner of the ''Art of the Past'' gallery in

Manhattan Manhattan (), known regionally as the City, is the most densely populated and geographically smallest of the five boroughs of New York City. The borough is also coextensive with New York County, one of the original counties of the U.S. state ...

. His sister business, ''Nimbus Import/Exports'', specialised in selling

antiquities Antiquities are objects from antiquity, especially the civilizations of the Mediterranean: the Classical antiquity of Greece and Rome, Ancient Egypt and the other Ancient Near Eastern cultures. Artifacts from earlier periods such as the Meso ...

from across the

Indian Subcontinent The Indian subcontinent is a list of the physiographic regions of the world, physiographical region in United Nations geoscheme for Asia#Southern Asia, Southern Asia. It is situated on the Indian Plate, projecting southwards into the Indian O ...

and

Southeast Asia Southeast Asia, also spelled South East Asia and South-East Asia, and also known as Southeastern Asia, South-eastern Asia or SEA, is the geographical United Nations geoscheme for Asia#South-eastern Asia, south-eastern region of Asia, consistin ...

to major museums around the world.

Arrest

On 30 October 2011, Kapoor was arrested at

Frankfurt International Airport Frankfurt Airport (; german: link=no, Flughafen Frankfurt Main , also known as ''Rhein-Main-Flughafen'') is a major international airport located in Frankfurt, the fifth-largest city of Germany and one of the world's leading financial centres. ...

and on 14 July 2012 extradited to

Chennai Chennai (, ), formerly known as Madras ( the official name until 1996), is the capital city of Tamil Nadu, the southernmost Indian state. The largest city of the state in area and population, Chennai is located on the Coromandel Coast of th ...

, India on charges of receiving artifacts that had been stolen from disused temples in southern India. Many of these objects were purchased by museums throughout the world. For example, in 2008 an 11th-century

Chola The Chola dynasty was a Tamils, Tamil thalassocratic Tamil Dynasties, empire of southern India and one of the longest-ruling dynasties in the history of the world. The earliest datable references to the Chola are from inscriptions dated ...

-period bronze statue of a Dancing Shiva was sold by Kapoor to the

National Gallery of Australia The National Gallery of Australia (NGA), formerly the Australian National Gallery, is the national art museum of Australia as well as one of the largest art museums in Australia, holding more than 166,000 works of art. Located in Canberra in th ...

for $5.6 million (see

Sripuranthan Natarajan Idol The Sripuranthan Natarajan Idol, is a 900-year-old statue of Natarajan — the dancing Shiva — that was stolen from the ancient Brihadeeswarar temple of Sripuranthan, smuggled to the United States, and then sold to the National Gallery of Aust ...

). The statue was allegedly stolen from an Indian temple in

Tamil Nadu Tamil Nadu (; , TN) is a States and union territories of India, state in southern India. It is the List of states and union territories of India by area, tenth largest Indian state by area and the List of states and union territories of India ...

. He was kept at the Vellore prison, but was later shifted to

Tiruchirappalli Central Prison Tiruchirapalli Central Prison is located in Tiruchirapalli, India India, officially the Republic of India (Hindi: ), is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by area, the second-most populous country, and the most ...

. He was attacked by a fellow inmate Kongu Yuvaraj, who was accused of committing an honor killing, following a heated argument between these two.

Recovery of smuggled items

In April 2022, the

Yale University Art Gallery The Yale University Art Gallery (YUAG) is the oldest university art museum in the Western Hemisphere. It houses a major encyclopedic collection of art in several interconnected buildings on the campus of Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut. ...

surrendered items valued at more than $1 million as part of art looting investigation. The 13 South Asian artifacts returned by the museum were smuggled by Kapoor.

References

External links

Archived copy of the ''Art of the Past'' gallery website
{{DEFAULTSORT:Kapoor, Subhash Living people American art dealers Art thieves Year of birth missing (living people) Art gallery owners American people of Indian descent

Arrest

Recovery of smuggled items

See also

References

External links