Almost the whole of 2014 Sheetal Mafaftlal was splashed in the news all over for the theft of paintings worth Rs 100 crorer. She accused her three friends – transport magnate Areef Patel, one of his company director’s Farukh Wadia, along with the latter’s friend Yasmin MY – of stealing her paintings worth Rs 100 crore, a total of 41 masterpieces (including 31 reported missing by Sheetal in her complaint) were recovered by the Mumbai Police.
The missing paintings were recovered from a flat which was rented by her own Man Friday and long-time manager, Manoj Shah.
As the paintings were discovered by the police she immediately left the country and went missing till recently. She was compelled to come back for the court hearings. If Sheetal is found guilty she may be sentenced to six months of imprisonment.
With the accuser herself turning out to be the prime suspect, the police have been unsuccessfully chasing her for months for questioning, but Sheetal has neither responded to repeated summons from the Crime Branch, nor attended any court hearings. Sheetal plotted it all, “right from shifting the paintings out of the bungalow till the police seized the originals”, the police said. They said, “Sheetal submitted false documents, including emails, declaring the painting to be gifts to prove that she owned them.”
Vikram, a prime witness in the case, told the cops he thought Sheetal was making copies of her valuable paintings by renowned artists to keep them on display so as not to destroy the originals.
“She did the work quickly. I was not aware of her intention,” he said, adding that he had even referred her to his regular frame-maker and to another photographer when she wanted more paintings copied.
Sheetal Mafatlal had removed 48 paintings from Mafatlal Bungalow in July 2011, without informing anyone. Her step-daughter Marushka filed a complaint with the Gamdevi police of theft against her. Of these 48, Sheetal stored 31 at her friend Yasmin M Y’s two houses in Khar and Bandra, after saying that she had no funds to store them at the art warehouse. The police verified their presence during the probe but allowed them to remain in the flats “for safety”, with instructions that they cannot be removed.
In August 2012, the Bombay high court allowed consent terms to be signed between Sheetal and her husband Atulya and other family members that gave Sheetal ownership to the paintings and dropped cross-complaints.
Sheetal then sought and got an order from a magistrate for possession of the 31 seized paintings. While taking the paintings back from Yasmin’s Bandra flat in October 2012, she declared they were fakes and refused to take possession. They were then kept at the police station.
The police said Sheetal, soon after removing the paintings in 2001 from the bungalow, kept them at a Wadala art warehouse and then sought help from her friend, Arif Patel, to store them elsewhere, as she “had no funds to afford the warehouse”. Patel sought Yasmin’s help as she had two flats. But Sheetal shifted the originals from Yasmin’s house to Crystal Mall, Bandra, made fakes with the help of fashion photographer Vikram Bawa and provided them as originals at Yasmin’s house when the cops came for a panchnama while investigating Marushka’s complaint. The cops seized the fakes, believing them to be genuine. Sheetal then shifted the originals to the office taken on rent at Princess Street. She tried to make the family believe that the originals were forged though they were in her custody, the police said.
She feared that the three may expose her if they came to know and as the paintings’ ownership was not proved, she may lose them, so she hatched a plot to capture the originals, the police said.
‘Goat’, a painting by Manjit Bawa, also nailed Sheetal’s scheme, the cops said. She had sent it and another by Gaitonde, ‘Red’, for restoration to the Pundole art gallery after removing it from the bungalow, but later mentioned it as one of the 31 seized by police during the probe.
With the Bombay High Court having earlier directed a time-bound investigation and closure of the matter, it appears that there is little choice left for Sheetal other than to file a protest petition before the Magistrate at 37 Court Esplanade – popularly known as Qilla Court.
