The ghost of Vaman Ghiya is rising

When notorious antique smuggler Vaman Ghiya was acquitted by a Rajasthan High Court in early 2014, thanks to some shoddy investigation and lax follow up by the custodians of India’s culture, it shook the very foundation of our beliefs. Here was a convicted antiquities smuggler who allegedly confessed to selling 10,000 objects of Indian art via reputed auction house Sotheby’s—the subject of a BBC sting operation under award winning journalist Peter Watson and mentioned in his book Sotheby’s - The Inside Story. Rajasthan police under Anand Srivatasava and Ram Singh strung together four years of investigations and arrested Ghiya in 2002.

Sotheby’s closed down its South East Asia desk in London, sacked two prominent staff who were alleged to have colluded with Vaman Ghiya in visiting sites in India. World over, wealthy collectors got jittery and donated their purchases to museums—salvaging tax benefits and honorary paraphernalia.

But 13 years since Vaman Ghiya was acquitted, the two ex Sotheby’s staff who went uncharged by India promptly opened their own antiquities dealership in London and continued to peddle in shady Indian art. It was a tight slap on the face of our efforts to dismantle the lucrative illicit trade in Indian antiquties. Like the proverbial hydra, the shady network sprung new arms and nuturted new avenues, including now-arrested dealer Subhash Kapoor.

Now, thanks to the diligent work by American Homeland Security agent Brenton Easter with support from voluntary activists like us, the ghost of the past has risen up to haunt Ghiya and has thrown a challenge to Indian law enforcement. His investigation from early 2009 was tabled on Friday in a US court, indicting the Wierner Galleries— a dealer who at her peak was possibly 10 times as big as Subhash Kapoor and sold entire auctions such as the Doris Wierner collection by Christies in 2013: objects for which Nancy Wierner has now been charged with deliberately faking provenances. 

The charge sheet is a painstaking expose of the dark underbelly of auction houses, Indian thieves and high profile dealers. This charge sheet will have an impact for years as major museums and collectors now know that the Feds will come knocking at their door anytime now.

On India’s side, the chargesheet names many prominent and hitherto unknown Indian smuggler—the likes of Shantoo (code name for Ranjit Kanwar ), Om Sharma, Sharod Singh, etc with proof of how priceless Indian artifacts were smuggled out of India, and payments clandestinely routed via dubious channels in Hong Kong. The most pertinent of the charges is the direct linkage of objects purchased illicitly by Wiener from Vaman Ghiya.

Doris Wierner passed away in 2011 and many prominent art experts including a Padma Sri awardee from India commemorated her memory.

The investigation was the result of unprecedented co-operation between American law enforcement and activists working on the Kapoor case— Operation Hidden Idol —which resulted in a huge cache of incriminating material. The results have been extraordinary: from the $108 million Kapoor seizures to the $20 million seizures during Asia Week (Wierner  Galleries and Forge & Lynch objects were seized in the raid) and form part of the evidence submitted in this charge sheet.

A direct impact will be on the Kushan Buddha, returned by Australia last month (also purchased from Wierner galleries) by the Asian Civilisations Museum, which has now been matched to a photo from the Shantoo archive.

It is now up to Indian law enforcement and ASI to understand the far-reaching impact of this investigation and speedily go after the named robbers and work on restituting Vaman Ghiya/Wierner objects in collections worldwide.

The author is co-founder of India Pride Project