Brought to India 14 years ago, notorious idol smuggler is headed back to Germany - The Indian Express

Fourteen years ago, Subash Chandra Kapoor, international antiques dealer and idol smuggler, was brought to India all the way from a German prison. Now, after a career that connected forgotten Tamil Nadu temples, Manhattan galleries, international museums, police files, and millions of dollars, Kapoor is preparing to make the journey in reverse.

The Madurai Bench of the Madras High Court has directed the Union government to take custody of Kapoor from Tiruchi Central Prison and proceed according to law to return him to Germany. The reason is an exquisite legal irony: The extradition treaty that enabled India to bring Kapoor here in 2012 has ultimately limited the country’s ability to keep him here.

Kapoor, a US citizen and once a celebrated Manhattan antiquities dealer, was convicted in 2022 and sentenced to 10 years’ imprisonment for the burglary and illegal export of 19 antique idols, valued at more than Rs 94 crore, from the Varadaraja Perumal temple at Suthamalli in Ariyalur district of Tamil Nadu.

His time already spent in custody meant the sentence was completed in 2023. Tamil Nadu, though, wanted to prosecute him in other idol-theft cases. Germany, whose consent was required under the rule of speciality governing his extradition, refused permission in four cases. Requests involving others remained unresolved.

The court has now held that allegations may be extraordinarily serious without itself becoming legal authority to imprison somebody.

For decades, objects appeared to move around Kapoor with astonishing ease. An ancient bronze could leave a village temple, acquire paperwork, cross oceans, develop a provenance and eventually stand beneath museum lighting —thousands of kilometres from the place where somebody once lit a lamp before it.

Kapoor’s Art of the Past gallery occupied a distinctly different world from the temples that figured in Tamil Nadu investigations. In Manhattan, he became a respected dealer and donor. Museums and collectors bought from him. His business dealt in beauty, history and provenance, although investigators would eventually argue that provenance itself could be manufactured.

His arrest produced one of the stranger episodes in that history. Three days after Kapoor was detained in Germany on October 30, 2011, he managed to send a handwritten instruction to Art of the Past. “Give back four items to Selina (Mohammad), Bronze Dancers, which are in the 4 closets,” it said. Another note followed days later: “4 dancers bronze in 4 closets = 2 pairs nataraj and conserts (consorts).”

Investigators believed the instruction referred to four enormously valuable Chola bronzes. Kapoor’s aide Aaron Freeman allegedly moved them to the apartment of Kapoor’s girlfriend and art dealer Selina Mohammad before American investigators raided Art of the Past and associated storage facilities in January 2012. The four sculptures disappeared.

Kapoor’s father, Parshotam Ram, was an art dealer who ran Kangra Arts and Crafts in New Delhi before the family moved abroad in the 1970s. Kapoor eventually emerged from the family business and established Nimbus Import and Export, becoming an important figure in the international antiquities market.

By 2007, American investigators were interested in him. A container arriving from India at New York contained more than 140 antiquities. Kapoor, who was supposed to receive it, abandoned the plan after apparently learning that authorities were watching.

When the FBI later examined why anybody would leave behind a shipment containing so many valuable objects, the trail led them to Kapoor. Investigators began watching him. A mole was planted inside his office. Conversations recorded. Emails and photographs accumulated.

Then there was his then girlfriend, Paramaspry Punusamy. Kapoor’s former partner and a Singapore-based art collector, she had quarrelled with him over five sculptures. After losing a court dispute over them, according to investigators quoted at the time, she began supplying authorities with information about Kapoor’s operations. Before his 2011 journey to Germany, she provided them with a recent photograph of Kapoor that helped authorities identify him.

An international antiquities empire was thus being squeezed by the FBI, Tamil Nadu policemen, an employee-turned-approver, and an angry former girlfriend — an unusually eclectic mix.

Yet beneath the almost caper-like details lay something considerably darker. Tamil Nadu investigators reconstructed a system in which thieves targeted inadequately protected temples, middlemen acquired idols, exporters allegedly mixed ancient bronzes with newly manufactured objects, certificates described consignments as handicrafts, and sculptures travelled through intermediary countries before appearing in respectable collections.

Then, investigators attempted to reverse the journey. The Metropolitan Museum of Art eventually agreed to return 15 sculptures once sold by Kapoor after determining that they had been illegally removed from India. Other works linked to him returned from Australia, Singapore, Germany and elsewhere. Yet, Tamil Nadu investigators say, many objects connected to Kapoor remain abroad or untraced.

India could bring Kapoor over under a promise: he could be prosecuted for the offence for which Germany surrendered him, while prosecution for other pre-extradition offences required the European nation’s consent. Fourteen years later, that promise has become decisive. The HC ruled that even the seriousness of allegations involving invaluable national heritage cannot replace the consent required by treaty.

So Kapoor, now 77, is expected to leave Tiruchi prison and return to the country where this extraordinary Indian chapter began. The idols are more complicated. Some have returned. Some sit abroad awaiting repatriation. Others remain missing.

Perhaps that is the peculiar final image of the Kapoor story: the dealer can be located, arrested, extradited, convicted, imprisoned and extradited again. The gods he dealt in have proved harder to bring home.

Arun Janardhanan is an experienced and authoritative Tamil Nadu correspondent for The Indian Express. Based in the state, his reporting combines ground-level access with long-form clarity, offering readers a nuanced understanding of South India’s political, judicial, and cultural life - work that reflects both depth of expertise and sustained authority. Expertise Geographic Focus: As Tamil Nadu Correspondent focused on politics, crime, faith and disputes, Janardhanan has been also reporting extensively on Sri Lanka, producing a decade-long body of work on its elections, governance, and the aftermath of the Easter Sunday bombings through detailed stories and interviews. Key Coverage Areas: State Politics and Governance: Close reporting on the DMK and AIADMK, the emergence of new political actors such as actor Vijay’s TVK, internal party churn, Centre–State tensions, and the role of the Governor. Legal and Judicial Affairs: Consistent coverage of the Madras High Court, including religion-linked disputes and cases involving state authority and civil liberties. Investigations: Deep-dive series on landmark cases and unresolved questions, including the Tirupati encounter and the Rajiv Gandhi assassination, alongside multiple investigative series from Tamil Nadu. Culture, Society, and Crisis: Reporting on cultural organisations, language debates, and disaster coverage—from cyclones to prolonged monsoon emergencies—anchored in on-the-ground detail. His reporting has been recognised with the Ramnath Goenka Award for Excellence in Journalism. Beyond journalism, Janardhanan is also a screenwriter; his Malayalam feature film Aarkkariyam was released in 2021. ... Read More