The National Gallery of Australia returned artefacts from its troubled Asian art collection to India at a handback ceremony in Canberra. Two pieces, a 900-year-old stone statue of the Goddess Pratyangira and a third-century rock carving of Worshippers of the Buddha, were purchased from disgraced art dealer Subhash Kapoor in 2005 for $328,000 and $790,000 respectively.

The arts minister, Mitch Fifield, handed those objects back to the Indian arts minister, Mahesh Sharma, at a ceremony in the gallery’s Asian exhibition.

The NGA bought $11m worth of antiquities from Kapoor in recent decades, including a 900-year-old bronze Hindu “dancing shiva” statue, Shiva Nataraja for $5.6m in 2007. The Shiva Nataraja was handed back to the Indian government, alongside a $300,000 stone Shiva with Nandi, in 2004, after reports it had been stolen from a temple in Tamil Nadu.

A third piece, a 900-year-old stone Buddha, was brought from Nancy Wiener Gallery, a New York-based antiquities dealer, for $1m in 2007.

An independent review earlier this year found that 22 of the 36 Asian art objects acquired by the NGA between 1968 and 2013 had questionable ownership history and 11 of those were considered to be “highly problematic”.