Nirav Modi’s prized art to go under the hammer
MUMBAI: The man accused of orchestrating India’s biggest bank fraud once counted among his most prized possessions an MF Husain painting that depicts the tussle between right and wrong in the human soul.
The Battle of Ganga and Jamuna is the centrepiece of an auction Friday in Mumbai, where India’s fraud investigation office is seeking to recover as much as ₹50 crore by selling paintings, watches, handbags and cars seized from Nirav Modi, the jeweller now fighting extradition from a London jail. If the diptych sells for its top asking price—$2.6 million—it will be an auction record for Husain.
“Since these artworks were in Nirav Modi’s house, they’re already pre-selected as the best ones,” said Dinesh Vazirani, founder of the Saffronart auction house, which is handling the sale. “And because the government of India is doing the auction, there is a gravitas to it. You know the title is going to be clear.”
Encouraged by the tax office’s decision to auction some of Modi’s paintings last year, the fraud investigation office has for the first time commissioned auctioneers to invite bids for assets seized from economic fugitives. As many as 31 debt defaulters have fled the country to escape prosecution, according to the government, leaving local banks with the world’s worst bad-loan ratio. Modi, 48, is the most prominent among them. He allegedly defrauded Punjab National Bank of $2 billion in a scam that ran for seven years before it was exposed in 2018. In his heyday, he dressed stars including Kate Winslet and Priyanka Chopra. Now he’s locked up in one of London’s most crowded prisons, awaiting an extradition trial scheduled for May.
The fraud allegations aren’t expected to affect valuations, according to Vazirani. Other items on sale include “Boy With Lemons,” a 1935 painting by Amrita Sher-gil, with an estimated range of $1.7 million to $2.8 million; and an untitled work by VS Gaitonde that may fetch $1 million to $1.3 million.