Indian officials released a charge sheet in September accusing a poor farmer, Raghavendra Parmar, of posing as a maharaja to sell forged paintings by M. F. Husain, S. H. Raza, and other major Indian artists to investment banker Puneet Bhatia. The 11 fake works, allegedly worth about $2 million, were sold through Mumbai's Rare Art Gallery, run by Rajesh Rajpal, and involved lawyer Vishwang Desai as a middleman. The investigation, ongoing since 2023, also implicates former IAS officer Subroto Banerjee, who denies involvement.
This case underscores persistent vulnerabilities in India's high-end art market, where rising prices for modern masters like Husain—whose work recently sold for $13.8 million at Christie's—create incentives for sophisticated forgery rings. The involvement of a marginalized farmer as a front highlights how economic inequality can be exploited in art fraud, while the upcoming opening of a Husain museum in Qatar signals the artist's enduring global significance and the stakes involved in authenticating his legacy.