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 Art is a diverse range of human activity, and resulting product, that involves creative or imaginative talent expressive of technical proficiency, beauty, emotional power, or conceptual ideas. There is no generally agreed definition of wh ...

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, boroughs of New York City. The borough is also coextensive with New York County, one of the List of co ...

. 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 physiographical region in Southern Asia. It is situated on the Indian Plate, projecting southwards into the Indian Ocean from the Himalayas. Geopolitically, it includes the countries of Bangladesh, Bhutan, India ...

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 ...

, 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 Tamil thalassocratic 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 to the 3rd century B ...

-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 t ...

for $5.6 million (see Sripuranthan Natarajan Idol). The statue was allegedly stolen from an Indian temple in

Tamil Nadu Tamil Nadu (; , TN) is a state in southern India. It is the tenth largest Indian state by area and the sixth largest by population. Its capital and largest city is Chennai. Tamil Nadu is the home of the Tamil people, whose Tamil languag ...

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

Tiruchirappalli Central Prison Tiruchirapalli Central Prison is located in Tiruchirapalli, India. The prison was built during 1865. The prison complex occupies an area comprising . It is authorised to accommodate 2517 prisoners. Notable prisoners * Subhash Kapoor S ...

. 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