US museum returns stolen statue to Cambodia

Return of Rama: Cambodians gathering around the sculpture of the Hindu god Rama during a ceremony at the Council of Ministers in Phnom Penh, after it was returned from the Denver Art Museum. — AFP

PHNOM PENH: An American museum has returned to Cambodia a 10th-century sandstone sculpture of the Hindu god Rama decades after it was looted from a jungle temple during the kingdom’s civil war.

The 157cm-tall torso, which was stolen in the 1970s from the Koh Ker temple site near the famed Angkor Wat complex, was handed over yesterday by the Denver Art Museum at a ceremony in Phnom Penh. The statue – still missing its head, arms and feet – had been in the museum’s possession since 1986, the Cambodian government said.