US Returns Two Stolen Cultural Artifacts to Nepal
Kathmandu, June 30: Nepal has received two cultural artifacts repatriated from the United States after they were recovered by American authorities.
The artifacts, a 13th-century bronze statue of Padma Pani and a 16th-century wooden statue of Nrityadevi, the Goddess of Dance, were formally handed over to the Government of Nepal at a ceremony held at the Consulate General of Nepal in New York.
The handover was completed after Consul General Dadhiram Bhandari and Colonel Matthew Bogdanos, Chief of the Antiquities Trafficking Unit of the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office, signed the transfer documents.
According to the Consulate General of Nepal, the Padma Pani statue originally belonged to Tham Bahil (Bhagwan Bahal) in Kathmandu and was smuggled out of Nepal between 1971 and 1987. The Nrityadevi statue, originally from I-Baha Bahi in Patan, Lalitpur, was illegally taken from Nepal between 1969 and 1983 and was later recovered from the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.
The artifacts were recovered through a joint effort involving the New York County District Attorney’s Office, US Homeland Security Investigations and other partner agencies.
The statues are scheduled to arrive in Nepal on June 25 and will be handed over to the Department of Archaeology. They will eventually be returned to their original sites after conservation.
The repatriation is part of Nepal’s ongoing efforts to recover cultural and religious artifacts that were illegally trafficked abroad decades ago.
