![]() Smith points to the presence of a red dye on the forehead of the kneeling stone devotee, indicative of the tikka that would be placed on it regularly as a blessing. The artefacts returned today had been worshipped by both Hindus and Buddhists in their respective communities, and were interacted with regularly. She adds that museums digitising and making public their collections in the wake of Covid-19 has, inadvertently, proved very useful in identifying looted artefacts held by institutions. Smith says social media is playing a huge factor in increasing attention towards the illicit trade of cultural artefacts stolen from Asia. Smith was instrumental in raising the incident with authorities in Nepal and Interpol, which then contacted the Metropolitan police. ![]() The post was flagged by Emiline Smith, a professor of art crime and criminology at the University of Glasgow who specialises in the trafficking of cultural and natural resources within Asia. Hayes adds that this is the first instance of a London commercial gallery voluntarily returning Nepalese artefacts, and that there have been “extremely few” other instances of Asian artefacts being voluntarily returned by dealers. He is not under suspicion for the trafficking of cultural objects. When approached by the police earlier this year, Barakat willingly gave up both objects for repatriation. The Met declined to name Barakat, referring to him only as a "London dealer", but The Art Newspaper can confirm the artefacts were found in his gallery. Its owner, Fayez Barakat, inherited them from a deceased relative and they had been in his family for “two decades”, according to Sophie Hayes, detective constable with the Metropolitan police. The artefacts had been in the possession of the London branch of fifth-generation antiques gallery Barakat. In a ceremony today at the Nepalese Embassy in London, two artefacts stolen from Nepal that were thought to be lost forever were repatriated.Īn ornate 16th-century wooden torana and a 17th-century stone statue depicting a male donor kneeling in a devotional pose were both illegally taken from temples near Kathmandu sometime in the late 1980s, said detective superintendent John Roch of the London Metropolitan police at the handover, where they were accepted by the ambassador Gyan Chandra Acharya.
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