A 900-year-old statue that spent three decades at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York after being smuggled out of Thailand was welcomed back to the kingdom in an official repatriation ceremony in Bangkok on Tuesday.
The 129-centimetre (51-inch) statue of the Hindu god Shiva, dubbed "Golden Boy", was repatriated after being linked to British-Thai art dealer Douglas Latchford, who was charged with trafficking looted relics from Cambodia and Thailand shortly before he died in 2020.
