Quick Facts
Biography
Subhash Kapoor is a New York-based art dealer on trial in Chennai for allegedly running a $100 million international smuggling racket. He was previously the owner of the Art of the Past gallery in Manhattan. His sister business, Nimbus Import/Exports, specialised in selling antiquities from across the Indian Subcontinent and Southeast Asia to major museums around the world.
Arrest
On 30 October 2011, Kapoor was arrested at Frankfurt International Airport and on 14 July 2012 extradited to Chennai, 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-period bronze statue of a Dancing Shiva was sold by Kapoor to the National Gallery of Australia for $5.6 million (see Sripuranthan Natarajan Idol). The statue was allegedly stolen from an Indian temple in Tamil Nadu.
He was kept at the Vellore prison, but was later shifted to Tiruchirappalli Central Prison.