The Annapurna statue, however, was on display at an art gallery in the University of Regina since 1936. While it was donated to the gallery by a Canadian lawyer and art collector and was claimed to be a statue of lord Vishnu, an artist of Indian origin Divya Mehra alerted the Indian Consulate. Mehra, who was invited to participate in an art exhibition in 2019, doubted the origin and began digging into art history. The Indian Consulate got in touch with Archaeological Survey of India (ASI), which established that it was the stolen statue of Annapurna.As many as 167 stolen Indian artefacts are being returned by the US too. They were symbolically handed over to the Indian PM during his last visit to US. The stolen or smuggled artefacts and antiquities include a 10th century 1.5m bas relief panel of Revanta in sandstone, a 12th century bronze Nataraj figure, 56 terracotta pieces, bronze figurines and copper objects and an 18th century sword in its sheath.
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