Authorities Seize Items Said To Have Been Looted from Indian Temples

He's been called “one of the most prolific commodities smugglers in the world today” - a longtime Manhattan antiquities dealer alleged to have trafficked more than $100 million worth of looted Indian cultural artifacts.

And on Wednesday Federal authorities added to the litany of thefts attributed to Subhash Kapoor, who is now facing criminal charges in India. In a raid at the Port of Newark, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents with Homeland Security Investigations, working with Indian authorities and the Manhattan District Attorney's office, seized a 14th century statue of a Hindu deity called a Parvati and four other bronze figures from the Tamil Nadu region, valued together at more than $5 million.

Authorities said they had been stolen from Indian temples. Even though the Parvati, a goddess of love and devotion, had been listed on an Interpol database of stolen works, it had “passed though the hands of six different dealers and been given multiple layers of false provenance over the past six years,” said a press release from Customs Enforcement. From 1974 until his arrest last July in Germany, Mr. Kapoor had operated his Art of the Past Gallery on Madison Avenue at 89th Street, listing many prominent institutions, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, to which he had donated or sold antiquities.

Christopher M. Kane, Mr. Kapoor's lawyer in New York, said he did not have enough details of the latest seizure to comment but added: “There are a lot of allegations. Nothing's been proven.”