The order comes after NAFED seeks to protect paintings as loan collateral HC rescues Husain’s art from damage
The Bombay High Court has directed the deputy sheriff of Mumbai to store and preserve 25 paintings by celebrated painter M.F. Husain worth `25 crore at the Fine Art Warehouse at Wadala in Mumbai, after it was informed that the paintings could suffer damage and loss of valuation while being kept in the locker of a suburban private bank.
The petitioner, National Agricultural Cooperative Marketing Federation of India (NAFED), had approached the court for recovery of its loan amount of `104 crore from a company out of which it had recovered a sum of `73 crore through immovable property.
NAFED was to recover the remaining amount from the sale of the paintings and hence sought that the paintings be moved out of the locker to ensure that they did not get damaged.
The order was passed by Justice G.S. Patel last week after hearing the contentions of NAFED in an arbitral award petition against the Swarup Group of Industries after the latter failed to pay up `104 crore that NAFED had loaned them in 2012. In earlier hearings, NAFED had secured recovery of `73 crore through the transfer of a sizeable chunk of real estate measuring around 48,000 sq mt inside a suburban mall owned by Swarup Group.
The remaining amount was to be recovered through the Husain paintings that were purchased by the Swarup Group.
According to the evaluation report done by a certified evaluator, the paintings were pegged at `1 crore each.
After the deputy sheriff informed the court that the paintings were stored in a cupboard of IndusInd Bank Ltd at Lokhandwala branch, the court observed that “this is an unsatisfactory state of affairs” as if the paintings were not stored properly they may get damaged due to improper storage or result in degradation of value.
While directing the transfer of these paintings to Fine Art Warehouse in Wadala, the court rejected the proposition to move them to Jehangir Art Gallery, the National Gallery in Delhi or National Gallery Modern Art in Mumbai, as they were not equipped to offer proper warehousing services.