New Arrest in Kapoor Case

The case of Subhash Kapoor's Art of the Past gallery on Madison Avenue at 89th Street (founded in 1974), continues.  The gallery remained open until it was raided last January by investigators who seized antiquities valued at $10 million.

On Monday, the district attorney’s office charged [Subhash] Kapoor’s sister, Sushma Sareen of Rockville Centre, N.Y., with hiding four bronze statues of Hindu deities [...] so they could not be seized by the authorities. Prosecutors say in court papers that after that raid, Ms. Sareen arranged to have the bronzes, then in an associate’s custody, moved “to a safe location.” Investigators would not comment on whether they had recovered the statues, which they identified as four 11th-century and 12th-century works that had been taken from temples in the Indian state of Tamil Nadu.  [...] Ms. Sareen, 60, [...]  is accused of hiding two bronze statues of the deity Shiva and two of the goddess Uma. They were displayed in Mr. Kapoor’s sales catalogs from 2010 and 2011, officials say, and have been listed as stolen by officials in India. The complaint says the Shivas are valued at $5 million and $3.5 million, and the Umas at $3.5 million and $2.5 million.

Tom Mashberg, 'New Arrest in Inquiry on Art Looting', New York Times October 11, 2013