HC orders auction of five art works disputed by Mafatlal family

MUMBAI: The Bombay High Court has ordered the auction of five paintings owned by Mafatlal Dyes and Chemicals Limited (MDCL), which went under liquidation in 2010

MUMBAI: The Bombay High Court has ordered the auction of five paintings owned by Mafatlal Dyes and Chemicals Limited (MDCL), which went under liquidation in 2010. It held that the paintings, including works by MF Husain and FN Souza, belonged to the company and not members of the Mafatlal family including Atulya Mafatlal and his former wife Sheetal, who staked their claim to the art works.

Mumbai, India - Aug. 28, 2015 : Bombay High Court : ( Photo by Bhushan Koyande )

The paintings – two art works by MF Husain and one each by FN Souza, Biren De and Jogen Chowdhury – were among 44 caught in a legal battle between members of the business family including socialite Sheetal Mafatlal, her former husband Atulya, and Atulya’s brother Ajay, who was Aparna prior to gender reassignment.

Unable to pay its debts, MDCL went into liquidation in 2010. To recover the company’s dues, the official liquidator filed three reports relating to the 44 paintings seized by the Mumbai Police in January 2014 following allegations of theft and other criminal offences made against each other by members of the Mafatlal family.

The paintings were placed under the care of the Sir JJ School of Art by the company court. While family members squabbled over their ownership, five paintings were identified by the police as belonging to MDCL.

A single-judge bench of Justice Somasekhar Sundaresan said, “In the teeth of the asset register, the purchase vouchers and the affidavits of the Mumbai Police, which make a clearly reasonable case for the (five) identified paintings to belong to the company, Sheetal and Atulya have chosen not to lead evidence and their conduct calls for adverse inference.”

The paintings had been at the centre of a family dispute since August 2011, when Atulya’s daughter Marushka filed a police complaint against her stepmother Sheetal accusing her of stealing 35 paintings and moving them out of the Mafatlal bungalow. Sheetal, on the other hand, filed a complaint of dowry harassment, matrimonial cruelty and domestic violence against Marushka, Atulya and other members of the Mafatlal family.

The police later found ten paintings in the house of Sheetal’s friend Yasmin Valibhoy, who she later fell out with. Yasmin had also questioned Sheetal’s claim to ownership of the paintings before the court.

The family was referred to a mediator by the high court and they filed consent terms and arrived at a settlement in 2012. Sheetal relied on these consent terms to claim that she was allowed to retain possession of the paintings. She claimed that Atulya, Ajay and Marushka had consented not to claim them.

The court, however, noted that the consent terms were filed with regard to 35 paintings that were the subject of Marushka’s complaint. Justice Sundaresan noted that in her statement to the police Sheetal had said she had moved 47 paintings and two artefacts out of the Mafatlal home.

He said the consent terms did not cover all 44 paintings and “this, in no manner, could be dispositive of whether the company did or did not own the subject paintings and cannot bind the official liquidator, more so bearing in mind the consent terms were among members of the promoter family under whose watch the company had to move to liquidation,” the judge observed.

“If the members of the Mafatlal family kept possession of paintings paid for by the company in the Mafatlal Bungalow and later fought over the said paintings, trading criminal charges, to eventually settle their fight among themselves, the consent terms cannot add weight to the question of whether the paintings belonged to the company or to anyone else,” the judge said.

However, in October 2012, after the consent terms were filed, there was another twist. Sheetal moved a magistrate’s court seeking the return of 31 seized paintings. When they were handed over to her, she alleged the originals had been replaced by fakes and a fresh round of criminal proceedings began. She filed an FIR against Yasmin and two others which was later transferred to the CID.

Yasmin told the Mumbai police that according to the asset register of the MDCL, the company owned the paintings. In January 2014, the CID found the 44 paintings in a premises rented by Sheetal in Princess Street. The police then filed a closure report in the case. When Sheetal challenged the closure report in the high court, it was dismissed in 2019 and the court permitted the police to prosecute her for making false statements. The Supreme Court too granted her no relief.

The court said Sheetal contended that all paintings belonged to her. Gayatri claimed to be entitled to the remaining paintings and conceded that the five identified paintings belong to the liquidation estate of the company. Yasmin, who had fallen out with Sheetal, was interested in cross-examining Sheetal to prove her wrong.

“Suffice it to say, none of the private parties has brought forth positive evidence to prove title,” Justice Sundaresan said. “There is nothing in Sheetal’s affidavit that asserts title. She has not adduced a single instrument even circumstantially in support of her title to the subject paintings,” the judge added.

“What is crystal clear is that neither Sheetal nor any of the members of the Mafatlal family who signed the consent terms with her, has led any evidence as to title to the subject paintings in court. These parties may have engaged in a mutual dispute and arrived at consent terms among themselves, but how they can claim title to the subject paintings is a subject on which they present nothing in evidence,” the judge remarked