Authorities in the United States have returned about 250 antiquities to India in a long-running investigation of a stolen art scheme.

The items, worth an estimated $15m, were handed over on Thursday during a ceremony at the Indian consulate in New York City.

The centrepiece is a bronze Shiva Nataraja valued at $4m, authorities said.

The ceremony follows a sprawling probe by the Manhattan district attorney’s office and US Immigration and Customs Enforcement, which focused on tens of thousands of antiquities allegedly smuggled into the US by dealer Subhash Kapoor, who has denied the allegations.

The case “serves as a potent reminder that individuals who maraud sacred temples in pursuit of individual profit are committing crimes not only against a country’s heritage but also its present and future,” District Attorney Cyrus Vance Jr said in a statement.

Authorities say Kapoor – jailed in India and facing charges there pending a US extradition request – used his Art of the Past gallery in New York to traffic looted treasures from India and various countries in Southeast Asia.

The investigation has resulted in the recovery of 2,500 artefacts valued at $143m and convictions of six Kapoor co-conspirators, Vance said.

Some of the stolen objects being returned to India, including this bronze Shiva Nataraja valued at $4 million, are displayed during a ceremony at the Indian consulate in New York, Thursday, Oct. 28, 2021. U.S. authorities have returned about 250 antiquities to India in a long-running investigation of a stolen art scheme. The items, worth an estimated $15 million, were handed over on Thursday during a ceremony at the Indian consulate in New York City. (AP Photo/Seth Wenig)

Some of the stolen objects being returned to India are displayed during a ceremony at the Indian consulate in New York, Thursday, Oct. 28, 2021. U.S. authorities have returned about 250 antiquities to India in a long-running investigation of a stolen art scheme. The items, worth an estimated $15 million, were handed over on Thursday during a ceremony at the Indian consulate in New York City. (AP Photo/Seth Wenig)

Some of the stolen objects being returned to India are displayed during a ceremony at the Indian consulate in New York, Thursday, Oct. 28, 2021. U.S. authorities have returned about 250 antiquities to India in a long-running investigation of a stolen art scheme. The items, worth an estimated $15 million, were handed over on Thursday during a ceremony at the Indian consulate in New York City. (AP Photo/Seth Wenig)

The Shiva Nataraja bronze was sold by the mother of Nancy Wiener, a gallery operator who pleaded guilty in the case this month to charges of conspiracy and possession of stolen property, authorities said.

Nancy Wiener sold looted items to major museums in Australia and Singapore, they said.

In June, the district attorney’s office returned more than two dozen artefacts worth $3.8m to Cambodia as part of the investigation. Another 33 objects were sent back to Afghanistan in April.

Court papers filed in New York say Kapoor went to extraordinary lengths to acquire the artefacts, many of them statues of Hindu deities, and then falsified their provenance with forged documents.

They say Kapoor travelled the world seeking out antiquities that had been looted from temples, homes and archaeological sites. Some of the artefacts were recovered from Kapoor’s storage units in New York.

Kapoor had the items cleansed and repaired to remove any damage from illegal excavation, and then illegally exported them to the US from their countries of origin, according to US prosecutors.

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