Two expensive antique statues stolen from India and on display at museums in the United States have been repatriated to India, PTI reported on Thursday.

At a ceremony at the Indian Consulate in New York, Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance Jr on Tuesday handed over the idols to India’s Consul General Sandeep Chakravorty.

The export of art and antique items by anyone other than agencies authorised by the Indian government is illegal.

Looting world heritage for profit is a “tragedy”, Vance said. “Trading in stolen artefacts is a crime and my office’s Antiquities Trafficking Unit is committed to recovering these precious items and returning them to their countries of origin for the benefit of all those who seek to study, view and appreciate these treasured relics,” he said. After evidence of their theft was provided, the owners of both statues forfeited them.

Subhash Kapoor, the main accused in this case, is currently lodged in a prison in Tamil Nadu’s Trichy, reported Firstpost. Kapoor, who holds US citizenship and was extradited from Germany in 2012, is being tried in two separate cases of antique theft.

The first statue, called Lingodhbhavamurti, is made of granite and shows an iconic representation of Shiva. Dating back to the 12th century Chola dynasty, it is currently valued at about $2,25,000 (about Rs 1.6 crore). Stolen from Tamil Nadu, it was on display in Alabama’s Birmingham Museum.

The second sculpture depicts the Bodhisattva of wisdom, called Manjusri, with a sword in hand. It is made of phyllite rock and painted in gold leaf. Dating back to the 12th century, the idol was stolen from a shrine near Bihar’s Bodh Gaya Temple in the late 1980s. Valued now at $2,75,000 (about Rs 1.9 crore), it was displayed at the Ackland Art Museum in North Carolina’s Chapel Hill.

The statues were repatriated after joint efforts from the Manhattan District Attorney, the Birmingham Museum of Art, the Ackland Art Museum, and a team of Homeland Security Investigations. “We will continue to work closely with these agencies and with other US authorities to work towards the restitution of antiques that belong in India,” said Chakravorty.