Smuggled Budha Sculpture To Be Returned To Pakistan
Wednesday, April 27th, 2016 7:05:52 by modousarr
A Budha sculpture smuggled from Swat, a district in Khyber-Pakhtunkwa in the 1980s, to the United States has been scheduled for return to Pakistan on Thursday.
According to reports, the exceptional sculpture is worth more than $1.1 million.
A ceremony is intended to be held in the District Attorney General’s Office Manhattan New York to celebrate the return of the smuggled unique figure.
The figurine was showcased at an art exhibition in New York for sale.
A passenger, in the previous year, was caught by customs officials with a Gandhara-era artefact from Benazir Bhutto International Airport (BBIA).
The passenger of Pakistani origin and a German national, Khan Zafar Ali was in possession of eight statues of Buddha. Ali was headed for Turkey on a private airline when he was intercepted and arrested following the discovery of the statues in his belongings.
The statues were delivered to the Department of Archaeology and Museums which claimed that one of the statues was an original Gandhara-era artefact, with the rest only replicas.
The original statue is said to be worth Rs1 million locally and about Rs1 billion internationally.
“Mixing originals with replicas is a popular trick among smugglers of archaeological artefacts,” he said.
The Gandhara civilization existed in the current Potohar region,, Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa and Afghanistan from 1500 BCE to around 500 CE.
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