The fine art of faking it

The last missing piece of the puzzle has finally fallen into place and the prognosis doesn't look encouraging at all for controversy queen Sheetal Mafatlal. After the original paintings worth around Rs 100 crore were recovered by the Crime Branch from the possession of Sheetal's trusted manager, now celebrity photographer Vikram Bawa has told the Mumbai Police that it was Sheetal herself who paid him to make digital copies of the originals. Bawa, who apparently never asked why she needed the copies, agreed to make around a dozen of them in his Peddar Road studio. For the rest of the fakes, we hear Bawa referred Sheetal to another female photographer who also had the expertise to create photopies on canvas.

The revelation has sent shock waves in Mumbai society which has been closely following the case ever since Sheetal filed an FIR against her friend Arif Patel and two others, accusing them of stealing her paintings and replacing them with fakes. One of her former legal advisors that told this diarist that any "reasonably sound person" would have made themselves available for questioning by now. Unfortunately, despite some rumours that Sheetal has quietly returned to Mumbai and is presently living in a safe house arranged by her Bandra-based businessman friend, officially no one knows her whereabouts. Meanwhile, many inside details of the bizarre case are slowly trickling out.

According to our sources, Sheetal's manager Manoj Shah told the police that he had repeatedly cautioned her against the audacious plan but was overruled. How significant a cog he's always been to Sheetal's ambitious forays into various 'businesses' over the years is apparent from the fact that she had made Shah a director and partner in her ambitious venture Mafatlal Luxury. Though the company had managed a tie-up with Italy's famed fashion house Valentino, it sank after a few summers in a vortex of debts and mismanagement. At the height of the drama over the missing paintings, Sheetal had displayed some histrionics in the chamber of a senior police official. Thumping the table of the Jt CP (Law and Order), she had loudly demanded that the police find her 'missing' paintings. It's one of life's blessed ironies its the same officer - Sadanand Date, now posted as Jt CP (Crime) - who will be taking this case to its logical conclusion.