An Upper East Side art dealer tried to peddle a swiped Indian relic at a Manhattan show last week — and when someone warned him it was stolen, he then quickly off-loaded it in a fire sale, according to court papers.

Manhattan DA Cyrus Vance won a court order last week freezing nearly $500,000 in assets belonging to the dealer, Nayef Homsi, who runs a gallery on East 75th Street.

Vance’s office plans to arrest Homsi in the coming days after a eight-year investigation aided by the US Department of Homeland Security.

Special Federal Agent Brenton Easter says in court papers that Homsi tried to hawk the “29-inch, black stone 9th century statue from the Orissa region of India” at the Asia Week Exhibition on Madison Avenue on March 17.

He offered the relic, labeled a “Bhairava,” for $70,000 but then pulled the piece when someone notified him that the statue had been stolen from an Indian temple, according to the legal filing.

Homsi promised to investigate the piece’s provenance, but then March 18, he “dropped the price by $15,000 and sold the Bhairava to a buyer in London, England for $55,000 listing the source as ‘a European Collection,” the filing says.

The Greenpoint, Brooklyn, resident allegedly sold two more stolen artifacts, including a gilt bronze statue of a 13th century deity lifted from a Nepalese temple. He unloaded the piece to a Beijing-based buyer for $370,000 in 2013, according to court papers.

The feds got a warrant to access Homsi’s e-mails and learned that the dealer was “nervous” about selling the statue, known as Samvara, because it had “the black spot of theft on it,” he wrote in a 2012 message to another dealer, according to special agent Easter.

Homsi’s third black-market transaction involved a phyllite stone statue from the Bihari region of India. An informant told Easter that Homsi received the 11th century relic from an “unnamed co-conspirator” who’d traded in “illegal and stolen Indian antiquities” for years. The co-conspirator consigned the piece to Homsi, who sold it to unidentified buyers for $70,000.

The court papers say the sculpture was covered in dirt, “the very hallmark of a recently excavated or stolen antiquity.”

Homsi and his lawyer did not immediately respond to messages seeking comment.

He’s due in court on the civil forfeiture action April 14.

In the meantime, he hatched a deal with the DA to keep about $14,000 in a checking account to pay his legal fees and living expenses.