It was located in October 2021 by Christopher Marinello, a lawyer and founder of Art Recovery International, a company that specializes in recovering stolen, looted and missing works of art.
Marinello said he came across the statue when a widow in the UK, whose identity he declined to reveal, asked his firm to assist with the sale of the contents of her home — which included the yogini figure.
“This item raised a red flag,” Marinello told CNN.
Marinello said the widow “had no idea,” and was shocked that the statue had previously been stolen, but was cooperative when she found out.
Marinello then contacted Vijay Kumar, co-founder of the India Pride Project, a nonprofit that is dedicated to recovering looted cultural objects across India.
“I started this basically as a nonprofit to raise awareness for the rampant looting of cultural objects,” Kumar told CNN.
An image of the goat-headed statue appears is Dehejia’s book, where she wrote, “On top of an isolated hill in the Banda district of Uttar Pradesh, near the village of Lokhari, are twenty images of Yoginis together with a large quantity of stone blocks that once formed the walls of a Yogini temple.
“Villagers report that in recent years, a number of images were carted away in trucks by vandals,” she wrote.
“This is…
Source : cnn
