The scandalous incident happened in December 2017. On that fateful evening, Rohana came to a party hosted by the Franklin Institute in Philadelphia. The young man went too far with alcohol and went to explore the exhibition halls of the museum. In one, he discovered a closed exhibit of seven stone warriors. They were part of the terracotta army of the first Chinese emperor Qin Shi Huang, by whose decree they were buried with the ruler in his tomb. Unique pieces were sent to the museum directly from China for display, and each statue was insured for $4.5 million.
According to CCTV footage, under the degree of Rohan, he wandered the hall for a long time and watched the warriors, using his smartphone as a flashlight. He then took a selfie with a former Chinese rider and broke his thumb, which he decided to take home as a “souvenir”.
The staff noticed the “crippled” warrior only a few weeks later. Law enforcement officers got to work and quickly figured out Rohan. The young man voluntarily surrendered his finger and admitted that he unwittingly committed the theft – the spirit was clouded by strong drinks.
Despite cooperating with the investigation, the unlucky partygoer was criticized in the Chinese community. The Shaanxi Cultural Relics Exchange Center, the expo’s Chinese organizer, noted that such a glaring incident had not happened in more than 260 cultural relics distribution expos in the past 40 years. . A Middle Kingdom official, in turn, accused Rohana of undermining and looting the “cultural heritage of mankind”.
The Chinese side has demanded harsh penalties for those responsible, and in 2018 Rohan was charged with stealing and hiding a cultural heritage site from a museum and interstate transportation of stolen property. For such a criminal “bouquet”, the guy was threatened with a sentence of up to 30 years in prison. However, disputes over the value of the finger, heightened tensions between Beijing and Washington and the COVID-19 pandemic bought time for the defense and stretched the investigation over more than five years.
In late March, Rohana agreed to plead guilty to a crime related to interstate trade in archaeological resources. The next hearing will be on April 17. It is expected that the guy will choose a sparing restraint measure: most likely, he will be sent to prison for up to 2 years, and the brawler will also be fined $ 20,000.
