[1][2] The sculpture is a depiction of Vaikuntha Kamalaja, a composite androgynous form of the Hindu god Vishnu on the right and his consort Lakshmi on the left.

[5] Two small idols are standing on louts; they are featured waving a mace, and the oblong stela is decorated with pearls and a flame pattern.

[6] In the 1950s, Nepal opened its border to foreigners, with thousands of tourists going to Kathmandu around the 1980s; since then, art began to slowly disappear from temples and monasteries and appear in museums.

[11] In 2015, she came across a blurry picture of the idol on a blog while conducting a Google Image search as part of a larger investigation into the whereabouts of Nepal's stolen statues.

[12] The museum and the lender were subsequently approached by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), which helped to reach a "mutual resolution and effectuate the transfer of this important object to Nepal".

[4] On 5 March 2021, the Statue of Lakshmi-Narayana was handed to Yuba Raj Khatiwada, Ambassador of Nepal to the United States by Timothy Dunham, Deputy Assistant Director of the FBI.

[16] Activists from Nepal said the return of the statue "could be the start of a process of repatriating thousands of other religious objects from Kathmandu that are now in Western private collections or museums".